How to be a revolutionary A novel

South African writer Davids (The Blacks of Cape Town) pulls off a complex tale of political upheaval on three continents. Beth, a South African former revolutionary, accepts a diplomatic role in Shanghai, partially in order to escape her crumbling marriage in Cape Town. There, in her lonely apartment, she is entranced by the hammering sounds of her neighbor's typewriter and is eventually introduced to the man himself, Zhao, an enigmatic, often brusque figure who comes alive at the mention of poetry. The two bond over a love of Langston Hughes, but Zhao soon disappears, leaving behind for Beth a manuscript, written in Chinese, that might contain verboten material such as reflections on the Tiananmen Square massacre. The narrative dips into Beth's teenage years fighting apartheid in South Africa, as well as Zhao's search for his lost mother. Interspersed are fictionalized letters written by Langston Hughes to a colleague from South Africa that touch on his McCarthy hearings and accusations of communism. Davids successfully grapples with the heavy historical material by tracing the silencing effects of political repression: "One didn't know where another stood, only that discussion would not be welcomed, was maybe forbidden for a Chinese citizen," Davids writes of Beth's trepidation talking with Zhao. The result is exquisite and eye-opening. (Feb.)

South African novelist Davids delivers a politically charged story of love and espionage. Beth, a South African consul long in the post-apartheid government's service, arrives in Shanghai to take up a new post. Disconcertingly, on moving into her new apartment, she is kept awake by someone's pounding on a typewriter late into the night. Although he denies being that "pertinacious typist," Huang Zhao comes by to ask for an English word that means "something like 'sad,' but not 'sad.' " The mystery deepens when Beth asks Huang for a context in which to place that word, a context he refuses to provide. He has reason to be sad, having lived through poverty and the Cultural Revolution and, as a Party-hack journalist, witnessed the events of June 1989 at Tiananmen Square: "I, Huang Zhao, a decent but cowardly man, testify that when the smoke cleared, the beautiful girl who had been seated weeks earlier against the lamppost no longer wore her face. No, it was stuck to the underside of a tank's metallic wheels." Davids spins several tales on parallel tracks, one involving a visit to Shanghai by the Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes and the trouble it earns him both with the Japanese invaders of China and, later, with the House Un-American Activities Committee; another recounts Beth's college friend Kay, killed while assembling a bomb intended for an apartheid-era police station. Hughes' story doesn't quite fit, although it affords entry into a long history of racism throughout the world; as Davids has Hughes say, "Some people cross to the other side of the road when they see me coming, as if I am contaminated, as if my skin is a disease rather than a beautiful shade of black." Racism meets sexism meets political brouhaha when Beth, with her "brown-beige skin," is charged with misconduct for smuggling the now-disappeared Huang's memoir out of China and is sent home. An intriguing story that, with occasional missteps, winds its way to an elegantly satisfying conclusion. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.