5.0 AVERAGE

arjasalafranca's review

5.0

The novel starts off explosively: “The crash of a door being forced open. A loud bang, bursting like a firecracker, then another, and another. ...It could be a dream, or more accurately a nightmare ...”

It’s a far cry from the book-lined study I found myself in, chatting to Hamilton Wende, author of House of War about his recently published novel, inspiration, symbols, life, books and household renovations, the evidence of which we tramped through to get to his study. It’s both sanctuary from his “other” job as a television producer, commentator and print journalist, as well as the place where Wende’s inspiration finds outlet. Looking at the shelves I notice local writer David Lambkin’s The Hanging Tree alongside Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, novels by historical writer Mary Renault and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.

House of War is Wende’s sixth book. He’s the author of The King’s Shilling - A novel about WWI in East Africa, as well as two nonfiction works which draw on his journalism and travels in Africa and other parts of the world, as well as a young adult novel and a children’s book.

This latest follows parallel narratives: the story follows the journey of Sebastian Burke, an academic now based in Britain, but brought up in the then Rhodesia. He’s been obsessed with the history of Alexander the Great and is convinced that there exists, or existed, secret royal diaries of Alexander. His chance to unravel the truth comes when he joins up with the documentary filmmaker Claire Finch, two photographers and a local academic, all travelling to the lost city of Ay Khanoum in Afghanistan. From the start though, they are dogged by drama and mayhem, and it’s never clear who can and can’t be trusted. The story moves in time – evocatively tracing the history of both Sebastian, haunted by a dark guilty secret of his own from his childhood in Rhodesia, to Claire’s reminisces, working in the Congo, and reaching even further back, to that of Alexander himself, centuries before.

Wende spent years researching Alexander’s story and was inspired to write the story based on his own travels in the region. In 2001, while working in the area as a film producer, he found himself standing next to a Northern Alliance soldier. “No-one knew what was going to happen,” he recalls. “The soldier kept saying Iskander in Dari. The soldier was trying to tell me that this was the city that was founded by Alexander the Great.” Wende started researching Alexander’s history, but his aha moment came while flipping through a 1982 Scientific American in the Wits library. As he told Janet van Eeden on www.litnet.co.za: “I flipped through the pages, and … it hit me like a bolt from the blue: The cliff face in an old black-and-white photograph in Scientific American was the same cliff face as in one of my photographs from the front lines. I had been to Ay Khanoum without even knowing it.”

Alexander’s world is brought vividly to life by Wende’s prose. “It was a very different world to ours,” he notes. “He had male and female lovers, and he modelled himself on Achilles. He was the most powerful man in the world and he slept with whomever he wanted.”

In House of War, Wende captures a few strokes of the time: “Drinking and battle. Battle and drinking. Bagoas, Hepheastion, Barsine, Thais – all of them competing for Alexander’s heart and for space in his bed. The mind boggles at the orgy of violence, sex and never-ending deceit that raged through Alexander’s closest circle. Day after day of cruelty and blood; night after night of wine and semen – a fog of drunkenness and madness grew in Alexander’s court, the layers of debauchery multiplying until reality itself grew twisted and grotesque.”

Alexander’s story is engrossing, and the passages throughout the narrative provide tantalising glances at his life. The drama of House of War plays itself out in the actions of Sebastian and Claire. It’s part thriller, part love story. Wende talks about imagining Sebastian’s childhood in Rhodesia, a childhood that is so compellingly portrayed you almost believe Wende is drawing on his autobiography here. But he’s not, instead Wende grew up between worlds, both in the US and South Africa. Claire, as the main female character, is equally sympathetically drawn: “I’ve tried to balance the male/female here, the yin and yang. Bringing out the female side of Alexander’s life as well.” He adds: “I’ve tried to write the kind of book I like to read, it’s both an inner and outer journey.”

And then, adding a further layer to the narration, Wende has posted Sebastian’s portions of his book, mentioned in the novel onto his website: www.hamiltonwende.com. Readers interested in following the story further can read Sebastian’s account of The Secret Diary of Alexander the Great. It’s a meta-level that expands our understanding of Alexander.

Wende’s work as a television producer feeds into his novel writer. “Journalists are good at the micro stuff,” he says. “The challenge is working out the mechanics of the narration. Writing beautifully is very different from narrating a story. If you want to write fiction you have to look at your narrative.” Already at work on another novel – centreing on a psychologist, and issues of trauma – Wende talks about how the early parts of a novel can be compared to a child and how a writer needs to trust the subconscious. Then we’re talking mythology, and Wende is currently researching the history of symbolism of lions, and we’re talking about such beasts as the manticora with its threefold row of teeth, the face of a man, blood red eyes and a lion’s body. Says Wende wryly: “It’s funny how things are suggested by the unconscious.”

See Wende on the net at www.hamiltonwende.com.