Paige Nick’s satirical masterpiece
UNPRESIDENTED Paige Nick Loot.co.za (R169) N&B Books
REVIEWER: JENNIFER CROCKER
SKIP forward a bit to the year 2020 and meet ex-President Jeremiah Geyjeyishwebisa Muza. He’s lurking around in tracksuit pants and has a small entourage with him at what remains of the ancestral homestead.
He’s determined that he will have a glorious return to power, after being given early parole from his jail sentence because of an infected ingrown toenail.
Meet Matthew Stone, a journalist who is very down on his luck, but has been commissioned to write the memoirs of Muza.
The problem is that Muza is not giving Stone much to work with.
And, as deadlines tend to do, this one is ticking.
Stone has been flung into the outer darkness of the world of journalism for writing a story made up almost entirely of fake news.
In Paige Nick’s audacious and blistering satire, we meet Stone and Muza 30 days to deadline on the book that is going to make them both some serious money.
But Muza is not in the business of giving up his story, and Stone is getting desperate as he tries to pry something from the ex-president that isn’t a lot of self-glorifying fake news. Stone is just not going to get the unexpurgated story, as Nick makes clear from the first chapter, “When I’m done, he [Muza] starts clapping, and everyone else joins in.
“’Very good, Mr Stone… This is rousing, powerful stuff, don’t you agree?’
“’I would agree, sir, except … except, I didn’t write a word of it, and none of it is really true, is it?’”
So, this is the problem. Muza isn’t going to give Stone the real story of his life. Stone’s only friend who will take his calls is his agent who is seriously on his case about writing the book on time, and the author has nothing.
Muza, pretty much has nothing either. Some of his wives have decamped and the two remaining wives, Bonang and Refilwe, have started up their own businesses. Bonang is making fashionable clothing and Refilwe has returned to practising law.
Muza is down to using the kitchen as his office.
Through a range of hilarious takes on the downfall of a man who just doesn’t really want to go down at all, Nick peels back the layers of corruption that often surrounds leaders.
She also creates wonderful characters who will make you roar with laughter, one of my favourites is Elijah who has come to see Stone about some unpaid debts. He’s Malawian, but has had a Jewish lover and the Yiddish in the book is a joy all on its own.
Satire requires a brave act and a skilful pen, and Nick has both.
This is a laugh-a-minute book, or it would be if it wasn’t also rather sad.
Although Muza is a buffoon and corrupt there are moments when one sees flashes of redemption in his character, not that they make him a better person, it’s rather the air of puzzlement he has that makes one feel a tiny little bit of sympathy for him and his predicament.
A book about corruption, fake news, an inability to look in the mirror and see who you really are, play out brilliantly in this novel.
Fast-paced it meets the criteria of satire brilliantly.
Read it and weep, it’s a slick satire, with enough humanity in it to keep one caring about a bunch of pretty reprehensible people.
In the irreverent tradition of her best-selling Death by Carbs, Paige Nick rounds up a fresh herd of sacred cows in another hilarious local satire.
But this time it’s Number One who gets the treatment…
It’s 2020, and ex-president Jeremiah Gejeyishwebisa Muza has just been released from prison on medical parole, with a dangerously infected ingrown toenail.
Now he’s back home with his two remaining wives, a skinny dog, a rapidly dwindling entourage, and a fire pool to maintain.
Plus, the municipality is demanding he pay a vast outstanding rates bill.
But Muza has plans – big ones – that include a memoir of alternative facts being ghost written by disgraced journalist Matthew Stone.
Will Stone meet his deadline, as publisher, agent, and drug dealer all breathe down his neck?
Will Muza pay the money in time and succeed in his plans to conquer the world? Will his long-suffering parole officer stay one jump ahead of him? And which side is he limping on today?
Paige Nick is a Sunday Times columnist, award-winning advertising copywriter, and author of the critically acclaimed novels A Million Miles from Normal and This Way Up. She is also one third of Helena S. Paige, together with Sarah Lotz and Helen Moffett, a trio of authors with a series of choose-your-own-adventure erotic novels, now out in 21 countries.
Nick is also the author of Pens Behaving Badly, a collection of her Sunday Times columns and the wild letters they’ve inspired; Dutch Courage (published in the UK as The Wrong Knickers for a Wednesday); and Death by Carbs, her wildly popular satire of banting and low-carb culture (shortlisted for the Bookseller’s Choice Award 2016).
Paige lives in Cape Town, where she spends an unhealthy amount of time writing.
This is a laugha-minute book, or it would be if it wasn’t also rather sad