It Takes the Women of a Village

A WRITER'S WIT
Calculus, the electrical battery, the telephone, the steam engine, the radio—all these groundbreaking innovations were hit upon by multiple inventors working in parallel with no knowledge of one another.
Steven Johnson
Born June 6, 1968

New Yorker Summer Fiction 2016

Each summer The New Yorker magazine publishes several short stories in a single issue. The implication is that one will tuck this issue under one's arm, take it to the beach, and read it from cover to cover. I wish. This profile of Zadie Smith's story is the first in a series of four. —RJ

Richard Mosse

May 6 and 13, 2016, Zadie Smith, “Two Men Arrive in a Village”: In this story two men enter an African village and commit rape and murder. ¶ Smith’s use of first-person plural allows the reader to peek over the narrator’s shoulder of this devastating scene. She could be one of its courageous women who form a circle around a young girl whom one of the men has targeted to satisfy his lust. The strength of the village women really comes to life, however, at the end when the chief’s wife returns to the village and learns of what has happened:
 
“But our chief’s wife stood up suddenly, left the room, and walked out into the yard” (47).
 
The reader has no sympathy for the men who have entered her village uninvited. Smith’s novel, Swing Time, will be out in November.
Photograph by Richard Mosse.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Summer Fiction Issue Continued

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