Mouwane writes The Good Dictator

Staff Writer | Thursday June 13, 2013 00:00

At the beginning, the novel is confusing, but as it progresses and one begins to piece the story together it becomes mind-gripping and takes you on a journey that touches on human emotions, a journey filled with a web of lies, betrayal, courage, love, selflessness and a brilliant twist. In this daring novel, one finds in it the same principle in George Orwell's Animal Farm, in that it tries to expose certain flaws about societies in general, especially the flaws inherent in politics.  Those who have read and enjoyed A Game Of Thrones will really enjoy The Good Dictator.   The story is a fiction, and is 364 pages long. The novel will be marketed in the United Kingdom (UK), United States of America (US) and Botswana.  It will hit the shelves in Botswana in November.

Barolong Mouwane describes the journey to producing The Good Dictator, as one of the most difficult, emotional and stressful undertakings in his life. The first attempt was while he was in secondary school some nine years ago, and he sent his manuscript to Oxford publishers in South Africa for review and it was rejected. The second time his sister gave it to a professor at the University of Botswana (UB) to look at, and the feedback was very good. However, very good, was not what Mouwane was looking for, he wanted people to regard it as one of the greatest novels.  And so he shredded two years' work and decided to start afresh. The third manuscript he asked the South African author and European Union (EU) Literary award winner Kopano Matlawa to look at, and one of the things that she later told him was that he shouldn't play it safe, that sometimes the readers want to be shocked.  So when he gave it a fourth try, he decided that this was it that he was going to put his soul and bones into it and write a masterpiece, which would take him five years to complete.His favourite writers include DH Lawrence, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Emily Bronte, Ian McEwen, Chinua Achebe, and Virginia Wolfe.

'Having been a struggling entrepreneur, and writer, the best advice I can give to anyone is, don't wait for anyone to give you a big break, and don't think that anyone will give you an opportunity. I wasted so many years going around submitting proposals, doing presentations. And what did I get in return, a stack of rejection letters, and many empty promises. It was only when I stopped looking to anyone, and realised that I needed to create my own big breaks, when I decided that I did not need anyone to give me opportunities, that I would create them for myself, and that I would finance my own dreams that I began to see some progress. The other thing is learning to start small, and growing organically, even if you have to start with a tuckshop, start with that, the big dreams and ideas will follow,' Mouwane said.