THE QUALITY OF MERCY: REVIEW

One of Ndlovu’s greatest strengths is that, in writing about tense and racially polarised times, she never takes the easy option of creating characters who are either all good or all bad. All are nuanced and, even more importantly, all are believable. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy of The Witness)

This is the third in Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s series of linked novels – The Theory of Flight, The History of Man and now The Quality of Mercy. All can be read as stand-alones, though the reader’s knowledge and appreciation of the many characters who re-appear is deepened with each book as their roles change.

Here the central character and undoubted hero is Spokes Moloi, the first black Chief Inspector of the British South African Police in the country that is on the eve of becoming Zimbabwe – independence is about to happen.

Spokes, a man of profound integrity and considerable detective ability is happily married to the “lovely Loveness” and is about to retire, with one regret – the murder of a young woman which happened way back and which he still wants to solve. But then the central character from The History of Man, Emil Coetzee, the strange and conflicted head of the mysterious Organisation of Domestic Affairs walks into the bush and vanishes, leaving only his hat and his bakkie behind. Has he committed suicide, been murdered, or turned into supper for a lion? Spokes is not the only person who wants to find out.

Ndlovu has created an enormous cast of disparate characters whose lives intertwine in many different and unexpected ways. It makes for a long and discursive novel, written in glorious prose and with a witty and ironic style. One of Ndlovu’s greatest strengths is that, in writing about tense and racially polarised times, she never takes the easy option of creating characters who are either all good or all bad. All are nuanced and, even more importantly, all are believable.

It is hard to do justice to such a complex novel – Ndlovu’s writing has justifiably been described as Dickensian – in a short review. The Quality of Mercy is a book that requires concentration – it would be easy to get lost among the numerous characters and events as Spokes tries to find out what has happened to Emil Coetzee and also to solve the mystery of who killed the long-dead Daisy, and why. Many things are not quite what they seem on the surface, and all the while, the background of a country on the cusp of shaking off its colonial past is there, an integral part of what is a powerful novel by a writer of considerable talent. - Margaret von Klemperer.

The Quality of Mercy is published by Penguin Books: ISBN 978-1-7763-8000-8