A chat with Wessel Ebersohn
First off, it is a pleasure for Crime Beat to welcome back to the publishing scene Wessel Ebersohn. But before that here’s a bit of literary history: in the dim dark days of 1978 (memory is not exact, I’m afraid) I wandered into the offices of Ravan Press in Braamfontein where Mike Kirkwood sat behind his untidy desk, a typescript on his lap. He was dressed in a suit – which was unusual for Kirkwood – but understandable as he had returned from a visit to the censorship board in Pretoria to argue for the preservation of the literary magazine Staffrider – the first issue of which had been banned. I sat down and he held up some pages from the manuscript he was reading and said, ‘You know this would make us a fortune but it’s been sold to Gollancz in the UK. And I can’t blame the author at all. I would’ve done the same.’ Kirkwood was referring to Wessel Ebersohn’s first thriller A Lonely Place to Die, which went on to be published in 14 countries. The next Ebersohn novel, The Centurion was published by Ravan and Kirkwood also published a later Yudel Gordon Divide the Night. This novel and another stand-alone, Store up the Anger, were published in the UK first and immediately banned in South Africa before the Ravan editions were even printed. However the banning orders were opposed and overturned. In the case of Store up the Anger, the censors then banned the cover and its replacement, and the novel finally appeared in a plain dustjacket that carried only the title, Ebersohn’s name and that of Ravan Press. Ebersohn is one of the big names in our crime fiction and his intensely socially and politically aware novels have done much to influence the way we write crime fiction today. That he has published again and intends publishing more in the Yudel Gordon series is seriously good news.
Crime Beat: It’s been nineteen years since the last Yudel Gordon novel (Closed Circle), which is a long time, did life simply get in the way? I know you became disillusioned with writing after the publication of Klara’s Visitors, was that part of what led to your withdrawal from the publishing scene? Or is the return of Yudel simply a matter of his forcing his way back into your life?
Wessel Ebersohn: My disillusionment came earlier than that, as far back as the 1980s. All my novels, except Klara’s Visitors, are set against the South African background of the time in which they were written. I was disillusioned by the killings on both sides in the liberation struggle. At that time, I fled with my wife Miriam to the Knysna Forest to avoid it all and lived there for six years. It really had nothing to do with Klara’s Visitors.
For the last fifteen years I have been involved in the establishment of Succeed magazine. Succeed is the other half of my Jekyll and Hyde personality. It is a stimulant for South African entrepreneurship, while my fiction is something much darker. It is my intention that each should reflect a different aspect of reality. Now that the magazine is, at last, running well I have the opportunity to return to fiction. When I say that it is running well, I mean that I now have my evenings free to write.
Crime Beat: Before getting into your new novel, the eccentric Yudel Gordon really does need to be welcomed back. He first appeared in A Lonely Place to Die then in Divide the Night and Closed Circle – all of which were well received and published in the UK, US and went into numerous European translations. When he first appeared in the late 1970s he was an unusual protagonist in a crime novel which is perhaps why he is such a fascinating contribution to the genre. Why did you choose to have a prison psychologist as your main character?
Wessel Ebersohn: Prisons are full of criminals and Yudel himself had been working away in my soul for some time. I had to let him out. I am not sure if I chose him or he chose me.
Crime Beat: Some of your books were banned during the 1980s. Were you ever told why they were considered offensive?
Wessel Ebersohn: The censors of the time seemed to think that they undermined national security. Those are not their exact words, but it came down to that. Both of the banned books dealt with deaths in detention, subjects that made them feel uneasy, I suppose. Divide the Night was the only Yudel Gordon to be banned.
Crime Beat: Writing crime fiction in the apartheid years was a tricky business. You couldn’t be sympathetic to the cops because the cops were as good as an invading army. You also might face the charge of being frivolous in writing popular fiction when writers and critics considered the only local novel of worth was the apartheid novel. Did you ever come up against this sort of criticism?
Wessel Ebersohn: No, but then the Yudel Gordon stories all reflected a great deal about our society of the time. In the same way, The October Killings reflects my view of the country as it is now. I never once was aware of any criticism that suggested my use of the thriller as a medium was frivolous. Oops, no there was one – from another novelist. I put it down to sour grapes.
Crime Beat: Certainly Yudel’s life and career is evidence of the difficulty and uncertainty of those years. As is the life of his cop friend, Freek Jordaan. Neither are completely at ease in government service. Clearly this was an alienation you wanted to exploit and highlight?
Wessel Ebersohn: The truth is that I do not decide these things on a rational or, should I say, an objective basis. My stories come to me and I write them down. I have always used the word, intuitive, to describe the process. Your question is completely understandable, but the fact is that I don’t know the answer.
Crime Beat: Was it the crime novel’s natural inclination to social criticism that attracted you to the genre?
Wessel Ebersohn: Partly, I’m sure. South African society has been utterly fascinating for as long as I’ve been alive. And yes, the crime novel does allow the writer to reveal all sorts of elements of the country that normally stay hidden.
Crime Beat: Presumably, given the criticism of the current prison system in The October Killings let alone the pot-shots at the avarice of the new elite, it’s the same sort of attraction for you now?
Wessel Ebersohn: My attraction is to thrillers. I like thrillers, or rather the thought of thrillers. Like many people, I find the battle between the good guys and the bad guys both interesting and stimulating. I am also impatient with most thrillers. The overwhelming majority leave me unfulfilled and I do not even finish reading them. In the Yudel Gordon books I try to do the things that I feel many thriller writers ignore. Most of all, I try to reflect some of the hard, unpleasant realities of my country. As for the pot shots at the new elite, perhaps my approach is a little more complicated. Yudel has been retrenched, but Abigail, the other half of the team, has seen her husband fall into an empowerment deal of absurd proportions. This does not, I believe, make her a less satisfying character.
Crime Beat: Far from it, it makes her a more interesting character as her reaction to the empowerment deal is muted, in fact she is embarrassed by it. But before we get to Abigail, let’s turn to the novel as a whole. In The October Killings we find that Yudel has taken the package – a polite way of saying he has been booted out by affirmative action policies – and has left the department of correctional services. But now he is being rehired as a consultant. There is implied criticism here – as elsewhere in the novel – that the government’s policies are ineffective and that they were rash in getting rid of what expertise there was. This mix of the fictional world with factual realities has always been a factor of your crime novels. Indeed, it creates a certain tension in the story as if at any moment you could step off the page into the real world.
Wessel Ebersohn: This is a fine criticism, Mike. Thank you. I hope that people do feel that they may be reading about the real world. Perhaps they are. There is no question but that government, guided by their determination to replace white bureaucrats by black ones, with very little care as to their abilities, did a lot of damage to the services they are supposed to provide. Some smaller municipalities barely function. Sadly, they still measure success by the number of black faces in an organisation, not by its effectiveness. None of this suggests that there are not many hard working and committed black bureaucrats. But there are also plenty who should not be occupying their positions. As for Yudel, his retrenchment has worked to his favour. In The October Killings he is now earning better than before.
Crime Beat: Indeed he is. Which is another criticism of a poor administration which is now costing the taxpayer considerably as outside expertise has to be brought in. However, enough of the real world at this point. Your novels have always been highly readable commercial fiction and The October Killings is no exception. With this novel you introduce a new heroine, Abigail Bukula, a lawyer in the justice department with a horrifying story in her past. She is a useful foil for Yudel but what attracted you to such a character in the first place?
Wessel Ebersohn: I had nothing to do with it. Abigail ambushed me the way Yudel had many years before. With her determination, her refusal to take crap from anyone, her sense of justice, her sheer zest for life and her looks, how could I resist her?
Crime Beat: I guess you couldn’t. Abigail is a feisty character. Sharp, bright on top of her game. Yet vulnerable at the same time and actually a bit of a loose cannon. Like Yudel she doesn’t seem cut out for government service.
Wessel Ebersohn: They both definitely have a problem there. Long, long ago I too was a civil servant and I also had a problem in that area. Free thinking tends to be frowned upon in civil services the world over. Yudel has been walking the tightrope of what he wants to achieve and what is expected of him for a long time now under both the apartheid government and the new South African one. It has not been easy, but he has managed.
Abigail is new to it and the whole thing is far more difficult for her. Things that Yudel would let go, she hangs onto. Her past in the liberation struggle gives her more confidence to take on the system, when she feels she has to.
Crime Beat: Abigail brings a useful moral argument into the story: the nature of good and evil. Her life has been saved twice: the first time by a soldier of the apartheid regime; the second by an MK soldier who exacts a heavy price for his troubles. As it happens both soldiers are white. Presumably the flip sides of the same coin with the racial baggage removed?
Wessel Ebersohn: Nothing in life is ever quite the way it seems. In the Second World War, for instance, all the self-sacrificing bravery was not only on the side of truth and justice. There was also much bravery among the German forces, ordinary boys fought in the Nazi uniform and not a few psychopaths on the side of the allies.
The same applies to the South African liberation struggle. While there is no doubt where justice lay, there were bad guys on both sides.
Crime Beat: Was there anything in particular that led you to this story?
Wessel Ebersohn: I suppose the moral ambiguity does appeal to me. It may not have thirty years ago when I saw the world in sharper shades of black and white. But the years have changed me and they have changed South Africa too.
Crime Beat: Much of the new crime fiction has been set in Cape Town so it is a welcome change of scene to travel about Pretoria and surrounds. What’s it about the city that makes it an attractive background for you?
Wessel Ebersohn: Pretoria is headquarters. Politically, it is the centre of things. And just down the road is Johannesburg, which is the centre of things commercially. Most of all, it is the region where I live. Probably the Cape Town stories are written by authors who live there.
Crime Beat: On a less serious note, the crime novelist Margie Orford contends that the crime novel is another way of writing a love story. In fact there are two love stories running through your book: that of Yudel and his wife of long-standing (and long-suffering) and that of Abigail and her editor husband, Robert. Both marriages are rejuvenated by the harrowing journey Yudel and Abigail undergo. It does seem to be a triumph of love over hatred.
Wessel Ebersohn: I never gave it a thought. Orford’s view is certainly an interesting one. There are two love stories in The October Killings, but the parties in both stories are married to each other. I guess in more ways than one, I am out of step with the times.
Crime Beat: One last question: a note on the dust jacket of The October Killings says there are more novels (I assume crime novels) to follow. Will Yudel and Abigail feature in these?
Wessel Ebersohn: They are the central characters of ‘Nights Like These’, the book I am working on at the moment. The title comes from King Lear: “Even things that love night, love not such nights as these.”
Note: Check out Wessel Ebersohn’s website where Yudel Gordon has his own blog.
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