Ask the Author: David Ebsworth

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David Ebsworth Hello Dany. First, thanks for giving Kraals a four-star rating and I'm glad you enjoyed the book. So far as cultural appropriation is concerned, I think you have look at the overall outcome. I remember the furore when Paul Simon produced the Graceland album and was accused of (a) flirting with apartheid; (b) exploiting the African musicians involved; and (c) making a small fortune in the process. All true, I suppose, to some extent but, overall, the album helped to put Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masakela and Miriam Makeba, etc, onto the world stage and they, in turn, were then able to use that prominence in the cause of anti-apartheid and the system's eventual downfall. But there are less honourable forms of cultural appropriation - like the repeated "borrowing" in the 40s and 50s by white US musicians of African-American music, making enormous profit from doing so and, usually, without either crediting the original artists or, indeed, making any contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. And, as a Briton, of course, I often have to hang my head in shame at the way my country has "acquired" cultural artefacts from the countries we colonised and made great profits from those too. Overall, I think the bottom line is, first, to what extent has "permission" been sought for cultural appropriation and, second, in what way has the benefit from any such acquisition been divided. I suppose that makes me particularly sensitive to the conundrum whenever I'm writing my own stuff (even though I make little or no profit from them). So, with Kraals, for example, I was particularly careful to work closely with the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Arts and Culture; to have Zulu colleagues in the Umlazi township of Durban preview the content and confirm that the Zulu viewpoints were as authentic as possible; to visit the book's locations and contribute to the local economy; and to actively support a couple of the projects I came across there - the David Rattray Foundation projects and the Rorke's Drift Community Project. The general response has been very positive since those I've spoken with in KZN are pleased that Zulu culture, and the Zulu's side of the Anglo-Zulu War, has been told and taken to a much wider audience. Does any of that make sense??
David Ebsworth It was really inspired when I read a factual account of French Napoleonic cantinière, Madeleine Kintelberger, who served with Bonaparte’s 7th Hussars during the Austerlitz campaign and was caught up in fighting against the Russian Cossacks while protecting her children who were also with her on the battlefield. Her husband had been killed by cannon fire and Madeleine held off the Cossacks with a sword that she had picked up, losing her own right arm in the process, being slashed and speared by lances on several occasions, and being shot in each leg. She was pregnant with twins at the time. The Russians took her prisoner and she eventually returned to France with her children, where she was received in person by the Emperor and awarded a military pension. Yet the most astonishing aspect of all this was the fact that Madeleine was simply one of hundreds of women serving in such positions in the French army’s front lines, many of them with similar incredible tales and yet largely ignored in fiction and non-fiction alike. Madeleine did not serve at Waterloo, but other cantinières, like Thérèse Jourdan and Marie Tête-du-Bois certainly did so.

And then, almost immediately afterwards, I also came across the real-life exploits of Marie-Thérèse Figueur who had joined the French revolutionary army in 1793 in her own right as a woman and who served with distinction in various Dragoon regiments through most of Bonaparte’s major campaigns until 1814 when she retired and opened a table d’hôte restaurant in Paris. Once again, her story was not particularly unusual. She also did not fight at Waterloo but we know, for example, that at least one or two women soldiers died on the battlefield – including the unidentified “beautiful” woman whose body was found in the aftermath of the fight by Volunteer Charles Smith of the 95th Rifles.

So the proposition was simple. What if two fictional women, but based on the real-life characters of Kintelberger and Figueur, were brought together by something more than a simple twist of fate during Bonaparte’s final campaign, in June 1815, that culminated in the Battle of Waterloo? And what if that “something” had a mystical element that would have been very typical of the age’s flirtations between the scientific and the spiritual?
David Ebsworth I enjoy telling stories that I wish somebody else had written for me but which have so far been overlooked. They are therefore generally set outside the most “popular” periods of historical fiction. Yet, with the bicentenary of Waterloo coming up – and the Napoleonic era remaining one of my personal favourite periods of history – it was inevitable that I would be drawn towards setting my fourth book around this most famous and important of battles.

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