Book Club - Eugen Bacon’s Serengotti

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author of novels and short fiction. 

Her fantasy writing has won a British Fantasy Award and has been a finalist for amongst others the World Fantasy awards and the Aurealis.

Today I’m bringing you her latest novel Serengotti.

(I’m just going to note that Eugen’s protagonist Ch’anzu uses the gender neutral pronouns ze/hir)

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A single day sees Ch’anzu’s life come crashing down around hir. First losing hir job, then Chanzu’s wife betrays hir and disappears.

The world doesn’t seem to want to relent and so Ch’anzu decides to pack up and leave, taking a job in the community of Serengotti.

Serengotti is a township for African migrants and refugees. It is meant to be a space for settling and healing for so many who have been displaced.

Ch’anzu arrives hoping for a new start only to find that when everyone is looking for renewal the past often follows them close behind.

Sernegotti is a breakneck novel that seems fueled by Ch’anzu’s sense of loss and displacement. The ruptures in hir life are underscored by Ch’anzu’s sense that hir identity is a live topic and perhaps an unspoken discussion amongst the people around hir.

In taking the leap and transposing hir chic Melbourne life for a rural African/Australian village we can feel Ch’anzu almost bargaining for a place to belong. In reality Ch’anzu is trading one feeling of being an outsider for another.

Within the borders of Serengotti the residents struggle to make sense of histories barely contained by their present calm. The weight of the violence and displacement that has brought them to Serengotti lives beneath the surface of the town waiting to erupt.

I was transfixed by Serengotti from the start. Within these pages we have lyrical, gorgeous prose telling a tale that is simultaneously strange and highly relatable. Ch’anzu’s search for belonging may take hir further than most but it is a journey we all feel. This is also a novel of mystery that weaves disparate voices together to bubble up the histories of the characters.

Serengotti is a surprisingly brisk read, or at least I found I flew through it. The novel is constantly hinting at more and layering characters and identities in a way that give it substance beyond its less than three hundred pages.

Finally Serengotti gave me that frisson of excitement and unease that you get when you see something familiar in a new way. From its unique look at rural noir, through the strange dynamics of half-met characters this book had me wondering if I really understood what I thought I was reading.

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Serengotti is a tremendous contemporary Australian novel that defies what many may think of as contemporary Australian writing. Read it for the pure entertainment of it and then stay for the thought provoking ideas.

At the time of writing Serngotti has been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Award’s Fiction Prize