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In their novels, Petina Gappah and Gergely Péterfy risk a change of perspective that radically questions the Eurocentric juxtaposition of wilderness and civilisation.
In Aus der Dunkelheit strahlendes Licht, Petina Gappah recounts the story of an unknown episode of African colonial history. The novel describes the adventurous journey of companions of the missionary and discoverer of the Nile sources, David Livingstone. They carry his corpse for thousands of miles across the jungle and encounter hunger, disease and death. One question flashes up time and again: how far are we prepared to go for our freedom?
Gergely Péterfy’s novel Der ausgestopfte Barbar (The Stuffed Barbarian) puts the spotlight on the Freemason and linguist Angelo Soliman, a famous personality in the late 18th century at the time of the Enlightenment in Vienna. He came to Europe as a black African slave; through his learning, he became one of the brilliant intellectuals of his era. At the same time, he was a fairground souvenir who was exhibited posthumously as a nameless showpiece and example of his ‘race’ in the court natural history collection, the precursor to the natural history museum.
Is the wilderness a construction of the explorers and academics, the conquerors and colonisers? What is represented as ‘wild’ for the peoples and cultures that had to subject themselves to the western conquest of the world? What is their perception of the wilderness? And to what extent are different ideas interwoven with each other today?

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Gergely Péterfy, b. 1966, is a Hungarian writer. His novel about Angelo Soliman was recently one of the bestselling titles on the Hungarian book market. Recently published in German: Der ausgestopfte Barbar, 2016. (English: The Stuffed Barbarian) “A challenging, painful, but breathtaking novel.” Helmuth Schönauer on Der ausgestopfte Barbar

© Henry Oliver Hakulandaba

Petina Gappah, b. 1971, is a writer from Zimbabwe. She studied law in Cambridge and Graz; she currently commutes between Harare, Edinburgh and Geneva and works as an international trade advisor. She has been obsessed since her youth by the story of the famous Scottish missionary and Africa explorer, David Livingstone, to whom her latest novel is dedicated. Recently published in German: Aus der Dunkelheit strahlendes Licht, 2019. “The viewpoint is historical and critical; it transcends the one-dimensional narrative of the whites, exploding it from the chorus of countless African voices.” Susanne Mayer, Die Zeit