By Peter Orner
Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover

The first recorded attempt to escape Goas occurred in 1930 when a farmer failed to trade the land for a lusher parcel. He established a precedent for the next sixty years: a great urge to leave, matched only by total practical impossibility.

Upon his death, he bequeathed the farm to the Roman Catholic Church. The diocese, not knowing what to do with an unprofitable farm, established a school.

Into this desolation enters Larry Kaplansk. (Kaplansk had an “i” on the end until Principal Tuyeni removed it on the day that Larry arrived.) He comes to teach English and History.

The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo Excerpt Our fences, unlike Krieger’s gleaming razor wire (talk that he went out there and barbed it himself when he wasn’t running down children), were mostly patchworks made up of hubcaps, sheet metal, plywood, car parts, bedsprings, hammered barrel lids, plastic crates, bricks, goatskins, crushed cans, assorted broken furniture, and in spite of Theofilus’s constant repairs, they didn’t do much but lean away from the wind. ©2006 Peter Orner Published with permission from Little, Brown & Co.

Mavala Shikongo immediately catches the eyes of the male staff at Goas but her past as a revolutionary soldier and rumors of a bright hope for her future create a distance. She is gone as quickly as she came in three short weeks.

When Mavala comes again, things are different. This time she has a young son in tow and she plans to settle at the school.

Kaplansk and Mavala begin secret rendezvous in a nearby cemetery. Upon the graves they build a relationship of mutual personal destruction. Their passion for one another launches them down a spiral of despair.

But Mavala may be more than Kaplansk’s condemnation. She may be his savior and his only escape from Goas.

Bookworm's Briefing
Set in the early 1990s, soon after Namibia won independence from South Africa, the novel is mostly narrated by Kaplansk but sometimes tells the story from other character’s perspectives. Peter Orner’s debut novel is presented in episodic chapters, often just a few paragraphs long.

It may give a first impression as just another artsy piece of literary clap-trap but Orner knows exactly what he’s doing. The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo proves to be written with force, style and wit.