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Rape, the nightmare and the mood of our time

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Last weekend, Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola’s extraordinary work of nonfiction, Rape: A South African Nightmare, won the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award. As the publisher of the work through MF Books, City Press asked me to have a chat with the author about her win. We took to email.

Two years ago when we sat at a coffee shop on Grant Avenue in Norwood, Joburg, and you told me you wanted to write a book on rape, did you have any idea what a phenomenal response it would elicit?

Not by a long shot. I didn’t even consider the reception, because I think temporarily forgetting about readers allows for a better, less measured or less self-conscious writing process. But even if I’d thought about readers and responses, I’d never have anticipated how passionate people would be about the book.

How has winning the Alan Paton Award affected you?

I don’t really know yet, but I’m delighted. And I’m overwhelmed by the generosity and outpouring of support and congratulations. I’m really humbled by it.

Books are hard to sell in South Africa, but this book has just gone into its fifth reprint. What do you think is attracting readers to it?

I think we need something different as a country, and we can see this reflected in the mood of impatience – rightly so – with the entrenched global rape culture and deepening rape crisis nationally. So, some of it has to do with the mood of the time. Because the book confronts some of the thornier aspects of rape, people are ready for something different from the helplessness.

In the book, you introduce some new and groundbreaking ideas. Please expand on the Female Fear Factory.

The Female Fear Factory, or the manufacture of female fear, is the environment that makes women constantly aware that we could be violated at any time.
It is part of rape culture, communicating that we are not safe in public, that we are open for harassment, that our bodies aren’t ours. It normalises rape culture.

You’re such an easy writer to publish because you’re so good, but what do you think of the publishing industry today in South Africa?

I think there are some remarkable writers working today, but too few courageous publishers. I have read creative manuscripts for publishers in the past, and sometimes the difference between the original manuscript and what comes out is not an improvement. Some of the compromises writers have
to make to see their work in print are quite sad. I know people who hate the versions of their novels that come out.

So what’s the next book you’re bringing to the coffee table?

I don’t know yet. I guess you and I will both find out when we next meet up for coffee.

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