Michael Cawood Green launches a new book, For the Sake of Silence, which has already received high praise from J.M. Coetzee who called it a "work of history cum fiction that will grip and sometimes amaze the reader".
Named after the Holy Fool and Gaper, Father Joseph Cupertino tells an extraordinary tale ranging from Austria to Bosnia, Natal to East Griqualand during the 19th and early 20th Century. It chronicles the journey of a monk, Franz Pfanner, through the obscure labyrinths of the Trappist order, avowed to a life of silent contemplation, to where he establishes the monastery at Marianhill in South Africa. Hardworking and devoted, Pfanner leaves in his wake a trail of controversy that reaches its apex at Marianhill which, through his missionery zeal, grows into one of the largest monasteries in the world.
His success at spreading the Word of God, however, comes at a terrible price, for it requires his surrender to the world of words, through which faith, contemplation and grace become intermingled with demonic possession, madness, even murder. After Pfanner’s death in exile the Gaper buries the heart of his Abbot and, for the sake of silence, violates his very commitment to silence in writing this chronicle. This provocative second work of fiction by Michael Cawood Green uses the multiple aspects of silence to interrogate the lost stories it recovers.
An extract from For the Sake of Silence.
Later, in a dawn shrouded with mist, I said the Mass for the Dead. Then I stood back as Sr Angela, still shaking with grief, went to the kitchen and came back with our largest knife in her hands. I said nothing as she stood with her arms raised, the blade gleaming in the light of the candles we had arranged around his body in the dark room. And I said nothing when the knife (a knife that, it struck me in that instant, in all its long service had never known flesh or bone or blood) suddenly flashed down and was buried in his chest. The sound of cutting and carving was strange in the quiet of the morning, and I withdrew into that stillness as the weeping Sister squelched about and finally lifted out the heart. This she brought bleeding to me. I took it in my hands, uncoffined, and walked out into a morning that was spreading like a bruise over Emmaus.
