Photo Credit: Joanne Olivier
Masande Ntshanga burst onto the scene with his critically acclaimed first novel, The Reactive, published first in his home country of South Africa (2014) and subsequently in North America (2016). With the release of his second novel, Triangulum (May 2019), Ntshanga has raised the bar with an utterly unique fusion of genres including science-fiction, mystery, and literary fiction. This complex and thought-provoking work blurs the line between reality and imagination while exploring myriad themes through the past, present, and future of South Africa.
Ntshanga kindly took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for The Nerd Daily. Read on to learn more about this gripping new novel, the elements of fiction explored in this work, and how his literary prowess once almost got him suspended from school.
So much happens in your new novel Triangulum! You have woven together multiple genres to create a one-of-a-kind story with a complex plot line that is told in three parts. When asked what your new book is about, how do you succinctly describe it to others?
I don’t mind using Science Fiction as an overall descriptor for the novel. To me, it feels like a nod to my adolescent years, where, for a while, it’s where I deposited and nurtured my imagination. In fact, I once almost got suspended from high school for creating a zine that was Science Fiction themed, but functioned, at its core, as a satirical take on what I thought were the draconian rules we were made to submit to each term. Juvenile rebelliousness aside, though, I’ve always found Science Fiction to be a form that’s irrevocably linked to critiques of power and societal structures. That’s how I came to it and that’s why I feel comfortable with describing TRIANGULUM as an SF work. It’s a novel angled towards those preoccupations. Namely, the dynamics of power, society and the imagination.
How did you come up with the initial concept for Triangulum? Did you have the plot clearly outlined from the start, or did the story grow organically as you wrote?
One of the earlier ideas I had about the book occurred to me when I was on tour in the US—on the road for my first novel, THE REACTIVE, towards the end of 2016. Most of the tour schedule was comprised of a road trip and we’d spend hours driving before cresting into the next town for a reading or a signing. The tour started in New York and ended in San Francisco, and by we, I mean Eric Obenauf, my editor and publisher, as well as Brett Gregory, who at the time worked as a production assistant at the press [Two Dollar Radio]. It was great—a really memorable experience—and I remember looking out of the window, one afternoon, while on the road, and for some reason, as we drove past this vast corn field, imagining a character who was not quite human, but who had spent her life on Earth living and working as one; and then giving an appraisal of the experience in the form of a manuscript. I began writing the notes down at the back of the car as we crossed state lines, travelling further west. Later, of course, I’d realize that this idea of an alien lifeform was the book asserting its genre to me [Science Fiction], but it wasn’t definitive, yet, and I wasn’t locked into the specifics of the premise, but instead, I knew that what I wanted to do was to write about the past, present and future of South Africa. Then it came to me that rather than a literal alien, I wanted to write about a character who felt alien, or alienated, who’d lived most of her life with the sensation of being a layer removed, but who, also, because of it, had been able to observe and document her life in a way that was clinical enough to highlight the changes in her society over the course of five decades. The rest, in terms of the genres I decided to incorporate—mystery, coming-of-age, historical fiction, cyber-espionage—came after this idea, but soon became as essential. Primarily, I wanted to learn about the three-act narrative, which I’d eschewed before as a technique, finding it too restrictive, and these genres presented me with the opportunity to not only do that, but to do so while maintaining my interest in the technique. There was some initial highlighting for the mystery subplot, but the rest developed organically.
In a Q&A with your North American publisher Two Dollar Radio you stated: “I wanted to write a book that demonstrated the sum total of what I’d learnt about fiction.” What are some of these key components of fiction that you wanted to demonstrate in Triangulum?
Firstly, plot, secondly, the three-act narrative, and lastly, character development through both dramatic incident and narrative voice.
In the Q&A with Two Dollar Radio you also stated that you wanted to write a book that was “honest in its exploration of the questions I had about our past, present, and future.” What are some examples of the questions that you had?
In essence, I wanted to interrogate the relationship between oppressive states/systems and their populations in the past, present and future. The idea of autonomy versus complicity when you’re the subject, or citizen, of such a state/system.
In an interview for the Johannesburg Review of Books you said: “I realised, as I was writing, that South Africa’s dystopian future could easily be imagined through its dystopian past.” Could you talk a bit more about how you played on this concept throughout Triangulum?
I don’t want to give too much away, but the book takes on the perception that South African history occurs as a continuum as opposed to being comprised of several separate and conclusive chapters. The way the novel addresses this, primarily, aside from its structure, is through locating allusions and reflections that echo across time in South African society. Namely, insurgent groups, human rights abuses, environmental degradation and economic disparity, amongst others.
In my review of Triangulum, I made the statement that this book blurs the line between reality and imagination. How do you handle the concepts of perception, memory, and imagination in this novel? What role (if any) do you intend for the reader to take in determining what is real and what may not be?
I’m interested in having the reader make that distinction for themselves, that’s true: the difference between the real and the imagined. That’s part of the book’s preoccupation, in fact: to interrogate how we narrativize perception, memory and the imagination when it comes to the stories we tell about ourselves—whether it’s personal or national history. Part of the book’s experiment was to lean in towards certain narrative conventions, but while doing so, to remain aware of them being conventions. In other words, I wasn’t very interested in producing the usual sleight of hand expected of literary fiction—of trying to create an enclosed and plausible simulation of reality that aimed to convince the reader. Not that that isn’t valuable, it is, but rather, in this case, I wanted them to proceed with the knowledge that this was indeed a composed text—composed by myself, as well as by the writers in the manuscript: the narrator; the doctors Buthelezi and Hessler—and not only that, but to invite the reader’s participation in deciding for themselves what was reality and what was imagined in its composition. This was not to task the reader with an arduous job, however, but rather, it was influenced by a desire to have them partake in the simpler joys of narrative; and one of the ways of introducing that for me was reader participation, which I drew from my experience of reading “choose your own” adventure books like the Lone Wolf series when I was a child. That was a layer I wanted to add to it, as much as the choice in genre, Science Fiction, was also a nod to a form that galvanized my imagination as an adolescent. As it stands, each of the three narrative strands in the novel can be read either separately or together. It’s up to the reader. Past, present or future. Or the continuum.
Many themes emerge throughout Triangulum. Because of this, it seems that different readers could walk away from this reading experience with different take-away messages. Likewise, different aspects of the story may stand out more to one person than another. What lessons were you most hoping the reader would take away as you were writing?
That’s a great question. To be honest, I was more interested in questions rather than lessons. I’ve always valued the idea of literature being a means through which to engage our reality—to turn it over—evaluate and interrogate it—and hopefully, at the end, derive meaning or even purpose from it. Instead of lessons, the questions I wanted to ask, primarily, are about the viability of our current iteration of civilization. In other words, if the world is in decline, as it so often appears to be, with environmental degradation, rises in economic disparity, global abuses of human rights, and so on, is it possible—based on our past and present; and the entire gamut of our cumulative knowledge—for humankind to imagine a future that could proceed without these ailments? If so, where would we begin and would it require a global intervention? Is there anything strong enough to do that? In the novel, I offer two possibilities, or ideologies, but that’s all done with the hope that the reader might be inspired to fill in a third.
Are you currently working on any new projects that you could share with our readers?
I’m working on my third book: a horror novel about poverty.
How long did it take you to write Triangulum? Do you have a routine/schedule that you follow when you are writing?
I would say it took anything from 3 to 5 years. I work loosely, when I’m still thinking around a book, but usually, when I’ve arrived at a time when it’s ready for a first draft, either through deadline or personal intuition, then I work through a very tight schedule, which means months in solitude, writing every day, from morning until evening, until it’s done.
Let’s Get Nerdy: Behind the Writer with 9 Quick Questions
- First book that made you fall in love with reading: The Gunslinger by Stephen King.
- 3 books you would take on a desert island: I still have so many books to read before I can settle on this, but a tentative list would include The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke [translated by Stephen Mitchell], The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano [translated by Natasha Wimmer] and The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa [translated by Richard Zenith].
- Movie that you know by heart: Satantango
- Song that makes you want to get up and dance: “Banquet” by Bloc Party
- Place that everyone should see in their lifetime: The Vredefort Crater
- Introvert or extrovert: Introvert
- Coffee, tea, or neither: Tea
- First job: Music journalist
- Person you admire most and why: I try not catalogue people into hierarchies
About the Author
Masande Ntshanga is the author of the acclaimed novel, The Reactive. He is the winner of the Betty Trask Award (2018), winner of the inaugural PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, and a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015. He was born in East London, South Africa, in 1986 and graduated with a degree in Film and Media and an Honours degree in English Studies from UCT, where he became a creative writing fellow, completing his Masters in Creative Writing under the Mellon Mays Foundation. He received a Fulbright Award, an NRF Freestanding Masters scholarship, a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship and a Bundanon Trust Award. His work has appeared in The White Review, Chimurenga, VICE, The Los Angeles Review of Books and n + 1. He has also written for Rolling Stone magazine.
Triangulum is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
