My Chocolate Redeemer (35 page)

All I need is time. Down the road the Number One Peasant continues to pass away. This is the time of trial. If he dies then the old world will have vanished. If he survives and returns to the Presidential Palace then my future is unsure, to say the least. It will mean that the universe has been put into reverse, it will be the equivalent of the big crunch. But if he dies – then! Because at my end of Patrice Lumumba Drive things are expanding every day, growing by leaps and bounds. In next to no time at all the pinpoint of life within me has grown to something like the size (and this is only a rough estimate) of a grapefruit … These are the early days of creation in the city of Waq, and, in that mysterious time behind the Planck Wall where telescopes may not spy, my universe is hot and young, and anything may happen.

About the Author

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg in 1944. He is the author of nine novels and one collection of short stories, including
Kruger's Alp
, which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction,
Serenity House
, which was shortlisted for the 1992 Man Booker Prize, and
My Mother's Lovers
, published by Atlantic Books in 2006 to great acclaim. He is also a poet and playwright and author of the celebrated memoir
White Boy Running
.

A
lso by
C
hristopher
H
ope

FICTION

My Mother's Lovers

A Separate Development

The Hottentot Room

Serenity House

Darkest England

Me, the Moon and Elvis Presley

Heaven Forbid

SHORTER FICTION

Black Swan

Learning to Fly

The Love Songs of Nathan J. Swirsky

The Garden of Bad Dreams

POETRY

Cape Drives

In the Country of the Black Pig

English Men

FOR CHILDREN

The King, the Cat and the Fiddle (with Yehudi Menuhin)

The Dragon Wore Pink

NON-FICTION

White Boy Running

Moscow! Moscow!

Signs of the Heart

Brother Under the Skin

Copyright Page

First published in Great Britain in 1989 by William Heinemann Ltd.

Published in paperback in Great Britain in 2010
and in e-book in 2016
by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Christopher Hope 1989

The moral right of Christopher Hope to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Acts of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner
and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters
and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities,
is entirely coincidental.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright
holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any
omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention
at the earliest opportunity.

The quotations cited as epigraph are taken from the following sources:
The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah
(Panaf Books, 1957);
Selected Poems of e. e. cummings 1923–58
(Penguin, 1967);
‘The Song of Lawino' in
Modern African Poetry
(Penguin, 1984).

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 84887 168 7
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 964 3

Printed in Great Britain
Atlantic Books
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26–27 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk