10 / 10
Described by publisher Two Dollar Radio as a “genre-bending novel,” Triangulum by Masande Ntshanga is a twisting, turning journey of speculative fiction. An unprecedented fusion of science-fiction, mystery, and literary fiction, this book blurs the line between reality and imagination.
The story opens in the year 2043 with reference to a set of documents which make the initially unbelievable claim that the world will end in ten years. Sent from an anonymous source to an astronomer with the South African National Space Agency, these documents have reportedly been examined, their claims verified, and prepared for publication. Using an epistolary framework, Triangulum takes the reader on a journey through this series of memoir-style journal entries alternating with transcribed recordings of regression therapy sessions, all from an unnamed female narrator.
What unfolds, at the core, is the narrator’s search for her missing mother. A search that is prompted by her ongoing and inexplicable visions of a great machine and a series of triangles. Visions of which she is desperately seeking the source and the meaning. Visions which may, in fact, be connected with extraterrestrial life and which she comes to believe hold the key to her mother’s disappearance.
Beginning in the narrator’s childhood and then jumping forward decades to adulthood, the storyline also includes a number of universal life experiences and hardships – her father’s illness and interminable grief over the loss of his wife, friendships that are closer than family, exploration of sexuality and true love. As she grows up, the narrator becomes enmeshed with a series of powerful and important groups. There is the government agency where she is employed and assigned to a special project, an activist group of which she is a secret member, and a terrorist cell that she is initially meant to infiltrate. Each source provides her, and the reader, with different bits of information. But what is the truth? How do her visions and her mother’s disappearance fit? And is the world really coming to an end?
This sounds bizarre, I know. That is understandable. It is bizarre! But in the most delicious way. Ntshanga masterfully weaves genres together, constructing a complex plot while simultaneously tackling a lengthy list of profound themes. Triangulum is set in post-apartheid South Africa and overtly incorporates the country’s history – particularly the impact of years of discrimination, oppression, and ultimately freedom – into the storyline. It is also a tale of coming of age and into oneself. Identity is explored throughout this novel via the varying lenses of family, culture, race, sexuality, and mental health. Then, on a broader level, Ntshanga incorporates a commentary on the influence and detrimental impact of technology on society.
Triangulum truly refuses to be categorised in a particular genre, to fit into a neat little box. The layering of both plot and themes provides the reader with a complex world and storyline that somehow manages not to overshadow the personal, intimate feel established by the narrator. This is the type of novel that, upon arriving at the end, you will want to open back up and start over again. That would benefit from a second, even a third, read to explore hidden details that may have been missed the first time around. This read is also such an utterly unique experience that you will most certainly want to discuss it with someone else. It is difficult to do justice to such a novel with a brief review, so I highly recommend that you pick up this wonderful, winding mystery and experience it for yourself.
My sincere thanks to Two Dollar Radio for the gifted advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.
Masande Ntshanga was born in South Africa and graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Masters in Creative Writing. He was the winner of the very first PEN International New Voices Award in 2013, a finalist for the Caine Prize in 2015, and winner of the Betty Trask Award in 2018. His debut novel, The Reactive, received great acclaim. His work has also appeared in many publications including The White Review, VICE, and Rolling Stone Magazine. Triangulum is his second full-length novel.
Triangulum is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
Will you be reading Triangulum? Or have you already? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Triangulum is an ambitious, often philosophical and genre-bending novel that covers a period of over 40 years in South Africa’s recent past and near future ― starting from the collapse of the apartheid homeland system in the early 1990s, to the economic corrosion of the 2010s, and on to the looming, large-scale ecological disasters of the 2040s.
In 2040, the South African National Space Agency receives a mysterious package containing a memoir and a set of digital recordings from an unnamed woman who claims the world will end in ten years. Assigned to the case, Dr Naomi Buthelezi, a retired professor and science fiction writer, is hired to investigate the veracity of the materials, and whether or not the woman’s claim to have heard from a “force more powerful than humankind” is genuine.
Thus begins TRIANGULUM, a found manuscript composed of the mysterious woman’s memoir and her recordings. Haunted by visions of a mysterious machine, the narrator is a seemingly adrift 17-year-old girl, whose sick father never recovered from the shock of losing his wife. She struggles to navigate school, sexual experimentation, and friendship across racial barriers in post-apartheid South Africa.
When three girls go missing from their town, on her mother’s birthday, the narrator is convinced that it has something to do with “the machine” and how her mother also went missing in the ’90s. Along with her friends, Litha and Part, she discovers a puzzling book on UFOs at the library, the references and similarities in which lead the friends to believe that the text holds clues to the narrator’s mother’s abduction. Drawing upon suggestions in the text, she and her friends set out on an epic journey that takes them from their small town to an underground lab, a criminal network, and finally, a mysterious, dense forest, in search of clues as to what happened to the narrator’s mother.
With extraordinary aplomb and breathtaking prose, Ntshanga has crafted an inventive and marvelous artistic accomplishment.s crafted an inventive and marvelous artistic accomplishment.
