Author: Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
711 pages, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Mifflin Harcourt, 2018
Call Me Zebra by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is an evocative and extremely delightful book. It is Oloomi’s second novel, her first fictional narrative being Fra Keeler: a book laden with dark humour. In Call Me Zebra, Oloomi spins again her magical literary loom: an output that wins her the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. As an American-British-Iranian writer, Oloomi highlights the hybridity of her ancestry by adopting the self-duplicity of Zebra Hosseini: the novel’s central protagonist. Bordering on psychological realism, the text vividly captures an introspection that is revealed by Zebra’s constant internal monologues. This caving into the self serves as a motif that explicates the exilic consciousness of central characters in the novel.
Largely, the novel revolves around Zebra Hosseini: the last living progeny of the Hosseinis’ lineage. Plagued by the terrorism of dictators in Iran, Zebra flees alongside her parents to Europe. In transit, Zebra loses her mum who is crushed by a collapsed building. This leaves her with her father with whom she continues the journey. Prior to their exile, Abbas Hosseini indoctrinates Zebra on the commandments of her ancestry, by virtue of which he tells her to find succour alone in literature. He also educates her on the rich literary productions of Rumi, Dante Alighieri and Miguel Don Cervantes, as well as, on the literary criticisms of Friedrich Nietzsche. As such, Zebra becomes a literary apologist: in her very own words, “a literary terrorist” (637). In New York City, Abbas Hosseini dies, and it is during his burial that Zebra takes up her new name: a transformation that becomes metaphoric of her multiple consciousness. As the text unfolds, Zebra’s meets cute Ludovico Bembo, a runaway philologist, with whom she gets involved in an amorous relationship. Arguing for its illogicality, Zebra refuses to yield to Ludo’s profession of love. Thus, Ludo suffers recurrent bouts of misery consequent of this unrequited romance. However, eventually, it is through the lens of his love that Zebra comes to terms with the true nature of her split selves. The novel ends with Zebra en-route Florence, Italy, in search of Ludo.
Interestingly, the novel spans through a litany of spatial and temporal settings: all of which buttress the novel as an appropriate frigate. Traversing through space and time, the text seduces its reader by swinging across Iran, the United States of America, Barcelona and Florence, to say but a few. However, this is not without an anchor as it helps to heighten the experience of exiles across the European continent. Coursing through an absolutely thrilling sequence of events, the novel explicates the genealogy of the Hosseinis’: a horde of super-intellectual “autodidacts, atheists and anarchists.” The story is told in a distinctive narrative style: an enthralling blend of the first person narrative and the third person limited point of view. Harnessing the first person narrative voice, the text unifies Zebra’s painful exile and the reader’s response into a collective whole: a fusion that aids to heighten the reader’s relish.
Another very interesting angle to this novel is the manner by which it criss-crosses literature and History. As such, the novel brings to the forecourt of the reader’s mind Zebra’s celebration of her ancestors’ commandments: cherishing them in a manner that bespeaks her agitation against scathing monolithic accounts of her homeland. Not only does she refer to herself as the 0.1% of the intellectual population, her rebellion is buttressed by the exultation of her painful estrangement experience, what she refers to as a ‘Grand Tour of Exile’ (119). Also, this is demonstrated by the proud manner by which she subverts immigrant slurs, referring to herself as a “penniless rodent” (119). Furthermore, a very striking portrayal of her utilization of the voice of the ‘minority’ is revealed in the manner by which the text crosses her path with iconoclasts amongst whom include Jose Emilio Morales: a Chilean exile and communist rebel. Under his guardianship, Zebra develops her manifesto– one with which she berates the politics of asylum and torchlights the apathy of natives towards immigrants. This is explicitly captured when she x-rays the American Foreign policy under a critical lens thereby highlighting its clandestine motive. As such, she opines that the policy “seems to subscribe to the following mission: Interfere with and profit from far flung government at the peril of their citizens” (64).
More so, by interlacing Zebra’s exilic consciousness with the amnesia of Don Quixote and the nostalgia of Dante’s pilgrimage, the text brings to the surface the parallelism between Zebra and literature. This is revealed by the analogous comparisons it establishes between the ricocheting effect of literature and Zebra. As a matter of fact, the first injunction in the Hosseinis’ commandments buttresses this: “Trust nobody and love nothing except literature. . . . It is through its missives alone that you will survive your death, preserve your inner freedom” (17). Against this backdrop, the text reveals the overtures that link Zebra’s encounters with the duplicitous nature of the literary text. One of such comparisons it hinges on the multi-faction which they both share. Against this backdrop, Call Me Zebra torchlights the labyrinthine nature of the literary text, one that echoes E.M Foster’s position of the literary text as ‘an echo of a thousand labyrinths’. Largely, this is what informs Zebra’s choice of a name for her manifesto, one she eventually tags as: A Philosophy of Totality: The Matrix of Literature. With recourse to this, Zebra asserts that: “Literature is so self-aware that it knows how to perpetuate itself. . . .” (124). Also, her adoption of the metaphor of a thousand heads helps the reader come to terms with the fluidity of her nature especially under the strain of an estranged existence.
Another important string that links Zebra’s experience of estrangement with literature is captured in the abysmal nothingness which the text reveals that they both share. Thus to a great extent, the novel highlights Zebra as a metonym for the literary text. The void, which she feels as a result of her estrangement, is revealed by her perception of literature: a black hole bearing a striking resemblance that aligns with Dante’s pilgrimage or descent into the underworld. This is demonstrated by her anarchist mathematical formula: “liberty=death=nothingness=literature” (158). To a great extent, it can be said that her estimation echoes A.N Akwanya’s position on the self-sufficiency of the literary text. With regard to this, Oloomi’s Call Me Zebra comes forth as an exciting read for all lovers of the post-structural. However, despite its erudite appeal and veneer of literary snippets, the text provokes humour by its parody of the art for art’s sake mantra. To buttress this, when Ludovico Bembo informs Zebra of the possibility of adopting procreation as a useful means of continuing her lineage, she rejects his suggestion but quips, “But I do believe in sex for the sake of sex, and should we have it, I plan to be on top . . . (180).
Another fascinating angle which this text brings to bear on its audience is its avowal of Otherness. This it buttresses when Zebra gages the degree of her existence using her supposed ‘Pyramid of Exile’. Not only does this help to extrapolate her hybrid consciousness but it also demonstrates the choice of her new name, Zebra: “an animal that rejects all binaries” (112). As a psychological realist text, the novel elaborates metempsychosis: a recycling of the existence of a soul in another human body. This is captured when Zebra tells Ludovico, “I’ve recently discovered that I’ve also absorbed traces of my mother through my father, who had absorbed her previously” (289). To a large extent, this deliberation informs her external actions of penetrating through her lineage’s existence through literary terrorism. However, amidst its focus on estrangement and exilic consciousness, the novel chronicles the amorous relationship between Zebra and Ludovico Bembo, one that fortifies the strength of their iconoclasm.
Largely, the tone and diction of the novel has a peripatetic appeal. In other words, the text appropriates an elevated language that demonstrates its intellectual grandeur. This choice of style helps to expound Oloomi’s sheer profundity. To an extent, however, except the reader establishes through a scan, its genre, the text may appear to be muddled up with a barrage of literary bits and pieces. With recourse to this, its style can come forth as a total turn off for the efferent reader but as a memorable haven for the aesthetics bibliophile.
What I find most gripping, about this novel, is its shocking twist, by virtue of which it torchlights underlying patriarchal constructs that may lie buried in the reader’s subconscious. This does the text achieve when it takes a detour, at the beginning of the novel, by delineating the central protagonist as a female. Prior to this revelation, the reader is likely to come to the biased conclusion that the protagonist is male. This hasty deduction takes its roots in the passing on of the knowledge of the Hosseini’s genealogical tree from father to child: a ritual that is specific to male children alone, especially in the Iranian context wherein the text is ensconced. More so, the reader is most likely to circumscribe Zebra to being male; especially with recourse to her enormous display of wit, gab and a plethora of philosophical musings. Nonetheless, as the core of the text unfolds, these conjectures by the reader turn out to be false. Against this backdrop, the text is endowed with a certain thrill that feminist readers will most likely identify with. As such, the text shatters the stereotype of men being the only logical breed of the human species.
In all, Call Me Zebra is an amazingly intense novel and makes for an enthralling read. Not only does it demonstrate the brilliance of Oloomi’s creative style but it also fulfils its purpose; thereby drawing its readers into an alluring labyrinth of the literary.
Onwuegbuchi, Nneoma is a graduate of English and Literary Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She served as the Assistant Editor of The Muse no.46