Reviewer: Catriona Troth
What We Thought Of It:
A River Called Time, Courttia Newland’s latest novel, is
unlike anything he has written before. It may well be unlike anything you have
read before – even if you are familiar with the genre of speculative fiction.
In his Afterword to this book, Newland writes that he set
out to write, “a decolonised novel, freed of any adherence to the race-fixated,
identity-based reality we live every day. I would mentally free myself from the
White Gaze.”
To do so, he constructed a world – in fact, a series of parallel
worlds – in which “the Transatlantic Slave Trade, colonisation and the genocide
known as Maafa … hadn’t ever taken plate, one in which Europeans treaded Africa
as the ancient Greeks once treated Kemit, coming not to pillage, rape and
murder, but to learn.”
But these worlds are no Utopias. Most of the parallels
contain a version of London (Dinium) in which a large area of the centre has
been destroyed by a catastrophic event and replaced by a giant monolith in which
millions of inhabitants live their lives without ever emerging from its hermetic
space. Within that monolith, there are lives of privilege, lives of poverty and
gruelling labour, and pretty much everything in between.
As we move between the different world, the same cast of
characters is reconfigured again and again, playing different roles and standing
in different relationships to one another. We even briefly find ourselves in a
world that seems indistinguishable from our own. Each one is fully realised,
the differences between them sometimes minute and sometimes vast.
The book has been a long time coming. Newland describes how
he struggled, first to find a way to write the book he knew he wanted to write,
and then to find anyone who was willing to publish it. There were those who
thought he should stick with the urban stories he was previously known for. But
finally, the book found its publishing home, with Canongate Books.
It is a slippery book – one that refuses to give up easy
explanations. Each section is enthralling in its own right - the connections
between them elusive but intriguing. Yet the author offers no moral compass.
There are no clear ‘good guys’ or ‘bad guys’. Like Markriss, the character we
follow from world to world, we are left to work out for ourselves what constitutes
the right choice.
Powerful, liberating and challenging, this book is an
explosive new entry to the canon of speculative fiction.
You’ll Enjoy This If You Loved: Technologies of the Self by
Haris A Durrani, Shadowshaper by Daniel J Older, An Orchestra of Minorities by
Chigozie Obiama, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.
Avoid If You Dislike: Books that stubbornly refuse to give
up easy explanations..
Perfect Accompaniment:
Spaghetti Bolognaise (if you read the Afterword, you’ll know why!)
Genre: Speculative Fiction
