Author Eben Venter was the guest speaker at the Sunningdale Book Club’s meeting at Elkanah House school on Friday last week.
Venter was born in the Eastern Cape but now lives in Australia. He is the author of Witblitz; My Beautiful Death; My Simpatie, Ceris; Santa Gamka; Wolf, Wolf and other works of fiction, including his latest, Decima, which gives voice to the plight of the critically endangered black rhino.
Published last year, it is described by publisher Penguin Random House South Africa as a “creative blend of autofiction, animal fable, mystery and scientific enquiry” and “an urgent plea to save one of earth’s megaherbivores. An elegiac work for numerous voices, Decima is a moving and thrilling lament to loss in all its many guises”.
Venter said his research for the book went well beyond simply reading about rhinos in academic works and popular articles.
“I went to Mbombela in Mpumalanga to the Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary to see how they deal with rhino calves that have been orphaned because their mothers were killed in Kruger National Park.”
The story developed from that visit, and he thought he could tell the story of rhinos through different voices.
“One of those voices was also from my mother, who was also dying at the time. She too spoke about animals and her love for animals. And then I brought the narrator, which is very close to myself, I brought the narrator’s perspective in on the rhinos. And then I also felt at one point that I want to actually try to let the reader get inside the skin of the rhino. I let the rhino speak for itself in the book.”
By giving the rhino a voice, he said, he wanted to show that it is a sensitive creature that feels, communicates and remembers.
His research also included visiting a sangoma in Motherwell in Gqebera as he wanted to know how poachers use muti before they go to hunt rhino in the game reserves.
The book club’s Hetta Dehaas said it was a great honour for the club to have a speaker of Venter’s stature.
“He is so well known, and he has done so much for literature in general and South Africa as well. To be able to say he came to us at Sunningdale Book Club is something out of this world”, she said.
