A Novel by Spencer Rowley
I see you. You are there. You are a person.
In a city that does not care about the people walking through it, a man who has lost everything and a boy who has nothing find each other in a doorway in Selby. Between the two of them, they have just enough.
“Just enough is more than sufficient, if it is shared.”
Order the NovelJust enough is more than sufficient, if it is shared.
Sawubona
About the Book
Robert Harrison is fifty-three years old. He lives in a room in Selby, Johannesburg, with no roof. He has been there for two years. He was, once, a baker. He had a wife, a daughter, a business, a house in Greenside. He lost all of these things in a single night, ten years ago, and he has been carrying the reason why ever since — in the pocket of his coat, wrapped around a small wooden heart.
Sipho Dlamini is fourteen. He is sleeping in doorways on Plein Street. He has a pair of Nike shoes that are not his, a dead best friend, and an absolute certainty — unshaken by everything the city has done to him — about who he is going to be.
Sawubona is a novel about what two people with nothing can give each other. Set in the specific, breathing world of contemporary Johannesburg, it is a story about guilt and grief, about fathers and daughters, about bread, and about a word that means: I see you. You are there. You are a person.
The Heart of the Novel
A man who has spent ten years believing something that is not true, and what happens when the truth finally arrives.
Johannesburg as it is — indifferent, alive, full of its own stories, and the particular dignity of those it does not notice.
A man who brings half a loaf to a doorway every morning for ten years. What this is and what it is not.
The specific cost of a decade of distance, and the long, careful work of what comes after.
A question asked early in the novel, not answered until the very last pages, and not answered cheaply.
A single Zulu word that carries an entire philosophy of human recognition. What it means to be seen by another person.
About the Author
Spencer Rowley was born in Rhodesia in 1958 and spent twenty years living and working in Johannesburg — long enough to know the city’s moods, its particular light, the texture of its streets at different hours. Sawubona is drawn from that intimacy. It is his first novel.
He has been, at various points, a soldier, a policeman, a husband and a father, an IT consultant, an artist, and a musician. He brings to his writing the attention of someone who has inhabited many different kinds of life and paid close attention to all of them.
His previous work includes Waiting for John, an award-winning one-act play. He currently lives in Nottingham, England.
Read an Extract
“In the course of your life,” intoned the teacher, “you will be faced with trials. We all are. Never, ever, look down in the face of adversity, children. Look into the eyes of your challenges, smile in the face of its roaring. Hold your head high and have hope. With hope, you will have strength. With strength you will overcome.”
The roof fan struggled gamely to circulate the sluggish hot air around the schoolroom as the youngsters sat spellbound, listening to the man speaking. Not one of them moved, each one almost afraid to breathe.
The teacher paused. His dark brown skin shone with sweat, and he reached up and wiped a drop of it from his broad nose.
“And never, ever, under-estimate the power of friendship,” he continued. “Learn early in life that with love in your heart, and not hatred, your life will be coloured brightly, your path will be smooth. Hold fast onto the love of a friend, for that is a love and a strength that will last a lifetime.”
He gazed into the earnest eyes of the children before him. “Never disregard the small things in your life. Something such as a simple pair of shoes can alter the course of your life, as it did mine.”
He lifted before him a pair of old, worn-out, well-used Nike track shoes. “These shoes brought me life,” he said. “They brought me love, friendship, happiness, safety, security, and a faith in humankind that I never had.”
Robert spoke again, filling the silence the way he had been filling it for twenty minutes — steadily, without pressure, as if he were simply thinking aloud and Sipho happened to be in the room.
“I was a baker. I tell you that already? I was a baker.” He glanced at Sipho. “I was lots of things. Lots of things. Still am lots of things, I suppose. But different things now.”
He paused and looked at the boy. Sipho was watching him with those careful, unreadable eyes, the bread in his hand, saying nothing.
“Hey, Sipho — don’t talk so much, man. I can’t get a word in edge-ways.” He paused. “That was a joke, OK.”
Sipho swallowed the last of the bread. He looked at Robert for a long moment with the assessing expression of someone who has learned to be careful about what they say and to whom.
“My name is Sipho,” he said.
Robert looked at him. Something shifted in his face — the particular attention of a man who has been talking to himself for a long time and has suddenly understood that someone is listening.
“Sipho,” said Robert. He held out his hand. “Robert.”
Sipho looked at the hand. Then he reached out and shook it, formally, the way his father had taught him.
It was the kind of evening that Johannesburg does well in autumn — the light going golden and then amber and then a deep warm orange across the rooftops, the air finally cooling after the day’s heat, carrying the smell of wood smoke from somewhere.
They were sitting in the doorway of the room, side by side, watching the light change. Between them on the step sat a tin plate with what remained of their supper — a heel of bread torn in two, three cold boiled potatoes, a pinch of salt in a twist of paper that Robert had been carrying in his coat pocket for two days against the moment it would be needed.
It was Sipho who broke the silence.
“Robert,” he said. “Tell me about your wife.”
Robert looked out at the orange light on the rooftops. He was quiet for long enough that Sipho might have thought the question wasn’t going to be answered, and then he said: “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” said Sipho simply.
Robert almost smiled. “Everything. That’s a lot.”
“There is time,” said Sipho.
This was true. They had the whole evening, and nothing that required doing in it. Robert looked at the amber light and thought about where to start.
Where to Buy
Sawubona will be available shortly in print and digital editions.
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Publication details and stockist information to follow.