Mage of Fools by Eugen Bacon
(Meerkat Press, 2022)
Reviewed by Jamie Mollart
Firstly, I’m ashamed to admit that before picking up this novel I didn’t really know much about Afrofuturism. Wikipedia defines it as “a cultural aesthetic, philosophy of science and philosophy of history that explores the developing intersection of African diaspora culture with technology.”
The term was first defined by American critic, Mark Dery, in his 1993 essay ‘Black to the future’ and (according to Barnes and Noble) includes novels such as The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, and The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.
Mage of Fools has made me want to delve further into the genre, because put simply, it’s a brilliant book.
Set at an undefined point in the future, Mage of Fools is at once a dystopia, futurism, myth, political commentary, and a warning. The state of Mafinga is held under control by a malignant dictator, Magu, and his powerful sorcerer, Atari. The land is ravaged by a magical climate change; all the men have been killed by a mysterious illness and the remaining women work in factories in forced servitude. In this barren land, Jasmine’s spirit hasn’t been broken; she has got a secret story machine, left to her by her husband Godi, and within the banned stories there may be the hope that is needed to bring down the dictatorship and return Mafinga to its past glory. When Magu’s wife steals her children and makes her a servant, Jasmine sees behind the curtain and sees the chance to rescue Mafinga.
I’m going to apologise again at this point, there is a good chance I may run out of superlatives in this review. This wonderful novel left me breathless at Eugen Bacon’s imagination and the strength of her craft. I devoured this book in a couple of sittings; marvelling at the world building, the writing and the sheer skill with which it is put together.
She writes with taut muscular prose and arranges it into chapters which read like vignettes, each one acting as a snapshot window into the fastmoving plot. It is at once poetic, lyrical and brutal, in both words and narrative. Extreme violence sits comfortably next to philosophy, next to allegory, it’s a virtuoso juggling act.
This novel is perfect on a sentence level and beautiful as a creative whole. The writing is sparse, but with a poignancy and stance which makes the words seems allegorical. For example:
Mama Apiyo’s pale eyes study her. Her sag of cheeks has seen many tears dancing in a moonlight. “I know times are hard. But a spider’s cobweb is both a bed and a trap.”
“You have no need for worry. I know a spider when I see it, and Maridadi is not one. She lacks the cunning of it. What she is, I can tell you in a hurricane. And that’s a whole different matter. A hurricane doesn’t contemplate who it strikes. It just strikes.”
You can open this book to any page at random and find at least one sentence on there that makes you want to applaud. Bacon’s mastery of the craft filled me with professional jealousy to a far greater degree than I want to admit.
The world building is so perfectly weighted it seems plucked from existing mythology rather than imagination. Mafinga is at once futuristic and reminiscent of the worst parts of past dictatorships. It’s part magic realism, part pure sci-fi, part mysticism. The collective whole is stunning.
Obama once said he learnt empathy through books (I hope I’m not misquoting him); Bacon goes one step further and suggests they are our salvation, have the power to solve humans’ problems, and the messages that are passed through them from generation to generation help us not only address the past, but deal with an unknown future. This brilliant book should be considered as part of that process.
Review from BSFA Review 17 - Download your copy here.