Welcome to our Hillbrow : a novel of postapartheid South Africa

160 Pages·2011·6.69 MB·English

by  Phaswane Mpe

FICTION
“Much of this delicately composed, elegant novel is a gentle
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and simple story of a woman searching for herself in a world of
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callous, unimaginative male supremacy. . . . The writing, disclos- C
h E
ing bitter, painful truths, is deceptively lyrical.”
—The Times e C
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i N
d
“This is a lyrical novel that portrays the life of an Egyptian woman E

who is forced to accept a loveless and humiliating marriage.” P

F rom Sleep Unbound portra y—s Tthhee lWifeo mofe Sna’sm Ryeav,i eawn oEfg Bypotoiakns iN S From
F O
woman who is taken at age fifteen from her Catholic board-
R R Sleep
ing school and forced into a loveless and humiliating marriage. O dA
Eventually sundered from every human attachment, Samya lapses H
M Unbound
into despair and despondence, and finally an emotionally caused S

paralysis. But when she shakes off the torpor of sleep, the sleep Y
S B A NOVEL
of avoidance, she awakens to action with the exposive energy of
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one who has been reborn. H
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C
ANDRÉE CHEDID (1920–2011) was a poet, essayist, dramatist E eN
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and novelist of Egypto-Lebanese origin. Born and educated in P E
Cairo, where she received a degree in literature from the American É R
U
F
University, she moved to Paris in 1946, and became a natural-
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ized French citizen. She was the recipient of many literary E
awards, including the Prix Louise Labbé (poetry), 1969; B D H
Aigle d’or de la poesie, 1972; Grand prix de l’Academie hT
O
N
Belge, 1974; Prix de l’afrique Mediteraneene, 1974; M
U
Prix Mallarmé (poetry), 1976; and Prix Goncourt de
A O
la nouvelle, 1979. N R
D F

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A SWALLOW PRESS BOOK
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Ohio University Press CT
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Athens, Ohio 45701
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ohioswallow.com
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T

From Sleep Unbound
MODERN
African
Writing
from Ohio University Press
Ghirmai Negash, General Editor
This series brings the best African writing to an international audience.
These groundbreaking novels, memoirs, and other literary works showcase
the most talented writers of the African continent. The series also features
works of significant historical and literary value translated into English for
the first time. Moderately priced, the books chosen for the series are well
crafted, original, and ideally suited for African studies classes, world litera-
ture classes, or any reader looking for compelling voices of diverse African
perspectives.
Books in this series are published with support from the Ohio University
National Resource Center for African Studies.
Welcome to Our Hillbrow: On Black Sisters Street: A Novel
A Novel of Postapartheid Chika Unigwe
South Africa ISBN: 978-0-8214-1992-2
Phaswane Mpe
ISBN: 978-0-8214-1962-5 Paper Sons and Daughters:
Growing Up Chinese in
Dog Eat Dog: A Novel South Africa
Niq Mhlongo Ufrieda Ho
ISBN: 978-0-8214-1994-6 ISBN: 978-0-8214-2020-1
The Conscript: A Novel of Libya’s
After Tears: A Novel
Anticolonial War
Niq Mhlongo
Gebreyesus Hailu, translator
ISBN: 978-0-8214-1984-7
ISBN: 978-0-8214-2023-2
From Sleep Unbound Thirteen Cents: A Novel
Andrée Chedid K. Sello Duiker
ISBN: 978-0-8040-0837-2 ISBN: 978-0-8214-2036-2
ANDRÉE CHEDID
From Sleep
Unbound
Translated from the French
Le Sommeil delivre
by Sharon Spencer
SWALLOW PRESS / OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
Athens, Ohio
© 1976 by Flammarion
English translation © 1983 by Sharon Spencer
Introduction @ 1983, 1995 by Bettina Knapp
First Swallow Press/Ohio University Press edition printed 1983
Swallow Press/Ohio University Press
Athens, OH 45701
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 (pbk.)
Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper. ƒ
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Chedid, Andree.
From sleep unbound.
“Translated from the original French title Le Sommeil délivré.”
ISBN 0-8040-0837-X (pbk.)
I. Title.
PQ2605.H4245S613 1983 843'.914 82-22459
CIP
to Louis,
this first novel
Woman may be compared to a very deep
body of water; one can never
predict the power of the undertow.
Vizir Ptahhotep,
"Instruction on the Subject of Women,"
Egypt, about 2600 B.C.
Foreword
Poet, dramatist, essayist, novelist, wife, mother, grand
mother—Andree Chedid is one of France's outstanding liter
ary figures. Her way is profound and sensitive, her vision
innovative in its archetypal delineations, her aesthetic is
lyrical, dense, symbolistic—a blend of the real and the un
real, the Occident and the Middle East. The protagonists of
her novels emerge from a universal mold; they are eternal
in their philosophical and psychological configurations—
they have stepped into life full-blown from the dream.
Andree Chedid, who is of Egypto-Lebanese origin, was
born in Cairo in 1920. She received her B.A. degree from the
American University in her native city. Married at the age
of 21 to Louis Chedid, a medical student, Andree Chedid
spent the next two years (1942-45) in Lebanon. The couple
moved to Paris in 1946 where Louis Chedid earned his de
gree in medicine, then became associated with the Institut
Pasteur. The Chedids have two children and six grandchil
dren.
Andree Chedid has repeatedly said that she is the product
of two civilizations, two ways of life, and two psyches. These
dichotomies, however, are fused in the works of art which
are her writings—stilled in giant frescoes, visualizations and
dramatizations replete with mysterious and arcane forces,
spheres bathed in subliminal darkness, insalubrious realms,
viii Foreword
as well as crisp, stark luminosities which crystallize sensa
tions, revealing the most imperceptible of sublime feelings.
Unlike the New Wave novelists, such as Michel Butor or
Alain Robbe-Grillet, who consider the novel to be a type of
puzzle, a mythology difficult to unravel, whose works are
divested of plot and characters and whose beings are perpet
ually following repetitive patterns; or the writings of Na
thalie Sarraute, whose dramas stem directly from the
interplay of tropisms, which is what she calls those inner
movements, those sensations and hidden forces within each
individual that are at the root of gestures, words, and feel
ings; or of Frangoise-Mallet Joris' dynamic clusters whose
raison d'etre focuses on questions of appearance and reality
set not in any philosophical or political terms, but as part of
a theological climate based on hope. Chedid's novels resem
ble to a certain degree, Marguerite Duras' works such as The
Ravishing of Lol V. Stein or The Vice-Consul, sequences of
essences flowing onto the stage in evanescent forms and
shapes, capturing the fleeting, enclosing ephemeral thoughts
and feelings in dazzling poetic images.
Andree Chedid's childhood days and her early memories,
particularly those associated with Egypt, play an important
role in her formation as a writer. Emotions and images, as
stamped in her writings, bear the impress of a dry and
parched land with its sun-drenched tonalities ranging from
deep ochre to a sandy-brown glare, from seemingly endless
skies, depicted in nuanced tones of incandescent blues, set
against a blazing sun and the sleepy, sometimes turbid wa
ters of the Nile. Her novels are bathed in endlessly shifting
emotional climates, disclosing and secreting shapes and
hues, energy patterns transmuted into human beings or into
landscapes—impenetrable domains where purity cohabits
with depravity. As Andree Chedid wrote in an interview:
... as far as I am concerned, it is less a matter of nostalgic return
to the past, of a concerted search for memories, than it is a need
to experience the permanent presence of an inner sentiment—
pulsations, movements, chants, misery and joy, sun and serenity,
which are inherent to the Middle East. I seem to feel all these
emotions pulsating within me. I believe I was very much marked