Wow! eBook
Absent. the English Teacher
Author(s): John Eppel (Author)
- Publisher: Weaver Press
- Publication Date: 1 Oct. 2009
- Language: English
- Print length: 164 pages
- ISBN-10: 1779220820
- ISBN-13: 9781779220820
Book Description
‘When George J. George mistook his white Ford Escort for the moon, he knew his time was up.’ When Mr George loses his job teaching English at a private secondary school in Bulawayo, ‘his pension payout, after forty years of full-time service, bought him two jam doughnuts and a soft tomato.’ When he backs his uninsured white Ford Escort into a brand new Mercedes Benz, the out-of-court settlement sees him giving up his house to the complainant, Beauticious Nyamayakanuna, and becoming her domestic servant. Through the prism of this engaging post-colonial role reversal, and spiced with George’s lessons on Shakespeare, John Eppel draws down the curtain on one particular white man in Africa. But before it’s time to go, George will delight us with the antics of his literature classes; his various arrests – all timed to coincide with the police chief’s need for help with essays on Hamlet and A Grain of Wheat; his keen eye for flora and fauna; and the long trek back through the hundred years of his family’s Zimbabwean past, as he returns an abandoned child to her home. Eppel has satirized the racial politics of southern Africa in many of his previous novels. In Absent: The English Teacher he turns his gaze inwards for a generous and richly rewarding parody of the land of his birth.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
In addition to writing short stories, John Eppel is also an award-winning poet and novelist. His first novel, D.G.G. Berry’s The Great North Road (1992), won the M-Net Prize in South Africa. His second novel, Hatchings (1993), was short-listed for the M-Net Prize and his third novel, The Giraffe Man (1994), has been translated into French. His first poetry collection, Spoils of War (1989), won the Ingrid Jonker Prize. Other poems have been featured in anthologies that include The Heart in Exile South African Poetry in English 1990-1995 (1996) and Intwasa Poetry (2008) while his short stories have appeared in anthologies that include Short Writings from Bulawayo (2003), Short Writings from Bulawayo II (2005). Writing Now: More Stories from Zimbabwe (2005), Short Writings from Bulawayo III (2006), Laughing Now (2008), and Long Time Coming: Short Writings from Zimbabwe (2008). His latest published novel is Absent: The English Teacher.
