Author: Hugh Paxton Publisher: MacMillan New Writing Reviewer: Peter Mitzner “Homunculus” is the title of Hugh Paxton’s debut novel. In a remote Catholic mission station in Sierra Leone, Father Jack has succeeded where so many alchemists have failed before him, for he has created a homunculus: an obedient little monster. General Butt Naked has supplied the necessary body parts. With the help of the South African mercenary, Christiaan Rindert, Father Jack tries to sell his monstrous creations. Unfortunately, the site of the auction, Freetown in Liberia, is not all that stable, as it comes under attack from both the environment and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels. Homunculus provides a frank picture of the incompetence and corruption of almost everyone and anyone who operates in Africa, from the politicians to the foreign mercenaries, the UN aid agencies, and the ordinary soldier – as seen through the eyes of the author. Also involved are the Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, the members of which turn out to be even more clueless than everybody else. The time is the present (more or less) and the setting is the civil war in Sierra Leone. As the author explains in an epilogue, many of the characters are either real people or are based on real people. General Butt Naked, for instance, whom you might imagine to be one of Paxton’s wilder feats of imagination, really exists. At least he does, says the author, ‘unless someone has shot him or his overtaxed liver has exploded’. The plot involves a modern-day alchemist who poses as a Roman Catholic priest (Father Jack), takes over a village in a remote part of Sierra Leone, and proceeds to manufacture homunculi. This, apparently, has been an ambition of alchemists for many centuries. These particular homunculi are manufactured from spare body parts (no shortage of those during a violent civil war), modern technology, and witchcraft (Father Jack has Papa Det lodged in a freezer, which keeps him quiet for most of the time). Having cracked the business of manufacturing totally obedient automatons, which can be used for any kind of wickedness, Father Jack decides to sell them to the highest bidder. And we go on from there. Naturally, this being Africa, absolutely nothing goes according to plan. The facts relating to African civil wars in the book are tragi-comic, and the violence so incredibly bloody, that no work of fiction can out-perform reality. Rape, mutilation and murder are carried out by and on children without anyone thinking it out of the ordinary. Despite all that being documented fact, the author may well be right when he claims that ‘Homunculus is probably the most bizarre work of fiction ever to emerge from the African continent (African presidents’ memoirs and autobiographies excepted).’ Homunculus certainly isn’t going to appeal to everybody. That audience is, probably, the younger generation and not the cynical I-have-been-there -and -got-the -T-shirt product of the hippy era or a baby boomer. The book is not made for easy reading either. Flying over it – like I usually do – I found myself lost with the variety of characters and the many infra-digs. These only start to make sense if you take the time to savour the text and mull over things like “the crocodile”” or “Lalapanzi”. The latter, of course, could never exist in Sierra Leone. It is pure Zulu, and means “sleep well”. After finishing the book, I did – although I may want to read bits and pieces again – just for the black humour and the fact that it does, in some scurrilous form, talk about a world we know all too well. At least Hugh is right here in Namibia, and if you can’t get hold of the book, you can always phone – if he is not on another journey somewhere in the world. The book is available at the Book Den.