THIS is the eighth of nine synopses of books eligible for the Citizen Book Prize.
The winner will be determined by readers’ votes. To help get your favourite manuscript published, vote and make your mark (see the voting box below the synopsis).
Voting for each synopsis will be open for the week following its publication in CitiVibe. If you miss that, you will be able to reread and vote for all nine synopses online from November 5 – 11.
Vote now! Tell your friends!
This is the only book prize for unpublished authors chosen by the reading public.
The Citizen Book Prize synopsis eight
Babette’s African Feast
by Christy Mulco
BABETTE is everywoman. One day she inexplicably comes to at the train station in Overberg, not knowing a soul, thrown upon the mercy of the station master Mr Wessels, and Steph Stephens, who works for him.
At first Babette helps Steph with housework but she soon finds a job with Dominee and Mev. Stander.
The community to which the Standers belong is a conservative group of country people who are trying to come to terms with the new South Africa. They are as drab as the gray and brown colours they wear.
Babette quietly works in and around the Standers’ lives. She loves cooking and experimenting with new ingredients.
Soon the Standers’ lives begin to “pinken up” as Babette adds spice to their lives.
Contrasted with this conservative group are the township people. Colourful, juicy, loud; they are somewhat unwieldy and are best described in technicolour, accompanied by loud music and vigorous dance. Babette impacts dynamically on both communities.
The story moves between Botriver, Hermanus and the township Zwelitshe.
In rural South Africa, as much as things change, they stay the same. Eventually Babette is able to bring the two groups together – a challenging and difficult thing to do.
The Standers and their friends come to enjoy more colourful lives and are amenable when Babette proposes a feast that will bring the two groups together in a collision of cultures that will change both groups forever.
But life has a surprise in store for Babette, who learns that she is HIV positive. Faced with adversity, she turns her fortunes around, using the news to effect joy in places of little hope.
She is confronted by the challenge of the potential devastation that Aids presents to her life and in the lives in the township; but she realises that one woman can make a difference.
This is a story about love, about the difference and sameness in people. It is a story of good luck and how someone, who is not willing to pursue materialistic ends and lose her soul in the process, can effect change in her very community.
Much of the story is told through the device of food. Babette works her magic through the palates and stomachs of her willing guinea pigs, using recipes from her childhood and culture.
She borrows from Western and northern Africa; she steals recipes from her friend Goya from Ghana. She invents delicious meals by using ingredients grown right outside her kitchen door. As the people open themselves to new foods, tastes and music, so too do they open up to Babette and the other cultures around them.
The conservative group warm up to their new lives. When Babette wins millions in the Lotto, the people of the township pull together to help her achieve her dream of using her good fortune to effect dramatic change in all of their lives.
This is a humorous story that gives some hope in a country overwhelmed by poverty and Aids. It is a story that builds on the tradition of Ubuntu and the love of communities.
Vote for Babette’s African Feast by Christy Mulco
Citizen Book Prize Shortlist: Babette’s African Christmas Feast by Christy Mulco(poll)
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October 22nd, 2009 @17:13 #
When you're at a lost for a plot or a title, just pinch one.
October 22nd, 2009 @18:16 #
Er, I mean "at a loss".
October 22nd, 2009 @19:45 #
Gosh. The pity of it is that Babette's Feast would work well as a movie remake in an African setting. Alas, this would fall foul of a LOT of copyright laws...
October 22nd, 2009 @21:12 #
This is my penultimate submission for this prize:
Love In A Time of Amoebic Dysentery
Martin is a mayfly and has just 30 minutes to live. Greta is a longer crested toad living in the swamp where Martin swam as a nymph. Greta's parents say it will never work, Martin's parents died shortly before he hatched. Will the great love of this unlikely couple cross the phylum divide or will the swamp's resident trout, Hector, bring their tryst, and Martin's life, to a tragic and premature end?
October 22nd, 2009 @21:39 #
Snorts, spills yoghurt on keyboard...
October 22nd, 2009 @21:48 #
That actually sounds like it could be quite painful.
October 22nd, 2009 @21:51 #
I snorted, but held on to the yoghurt. One word, Helen. Coke. But let it get flat first, or that could be even more painful.
October 22nd, 2009 @22:30 #
This idea has legs.
"Bleak African House"
"The Great African Gatsby"
"African Middlemarch"
"Pride and Prejudice ... in Africa"
"For Whom The African Bell Tolls"
"Out Of Africa II"
The possiblities are endless.
October 22nd, 2009 @22:39 #
Fifi, you temptress...
"Gone With The African Wind"
"Silence of the African Lambs"
"Taxi Driver in Africa" (now this really has possibilities)
October 22nd, 2009 @22:46 #
I know! A remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, only they flee to 21st-century Jozi instead of Bolivia. After sewing up the local perlemoen smuggling mafia, they live the high life in Plett until they are forced to relocate to the Cape Flats, where they form rival gangs and get taken out in a turf war. No, that's a downer, they win the lottery and donate it all to the Aquarium on behalf of baby perlemoens, and to sponsor an annual poetry reading in front of the shark tank.
October 22nd, 2009 @22:49 #
You and Sven will look silly if one of your synopses is actually chosen and you have to spent the next eight months turning it into a novel...
October 22nd, 2009 @23:06 #
Fiona, my submissions are not synopses, they are actual novels - finished products. I'm the self-ordained master of speculative nano-fiction.
October 23rd, 2009 @11:01 #
Fifi, as long as they pay me, I won't feel that silly.
October 23rd, 2009 @15:22 #
Oh it's Fiona Snickers (or is it Sniggers?) and that strange fruit Miss Muffet (Ms Booksa) again having fun at newer writers. What terrible things happened to you when you began writing that you have to be so bitchy or do you just have too much time on your hands?
October 23rd, 2009 @16:29 #
How come Sven doesn't get a pun on his name?
October 23rd, 2009 @17:22 #
My name is so awful people spare me out of pity in these sorts of situations.
October 23rd, 2009 @19:32 #
Poppie, we take swings at everyone around here - new writers, established writers (coughcoetzeecough), and each other. Folk who want to write have to develop very thick skins. And if you submit a piece of writing that is going to be judged in a public forum, you have to brace yourself for whatever comes your way.
Furthermore, I've said it before and I'll say it again, the first synopsis that appeared on this shortlist was VERY impressive. I wish I could vote for it a hundred times.
October 23rd, 2009 @22:41 #
A quick look at my comments shows that I put a lot of thought and energy (and time!) into encouraging young/new writers. I don't have too much patience, however, for the "pop idols" writer-wannabe who hopes to appear in print without doing one bit of homework. The author of this particular synopsis hasn't bothered to check the basics of copyright law -- a pity, because they can clearly write. Like Fiona, I thought the first synopsis was brilliant, and I voted for it. But it's painfully obvious that some of the subsequent writers did zero market research. Even worse is the impression that some read no local fiction at all.