Queer Books | Alistair Mackay on his dazzling debut novel
11.05.2022 - 20:33
/ mambaonline.com
It’s not every day that we see a South African, queer, dystopian-sci-fi novel hitting bookstore shelves. The fact that it’s also a gripping, poignant and timely book is further cause for celebration.
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way is Alistair Mackay’s first novel, and it’s making waves in the literary world; earning him rave reviews.
Set in Cape Town, it’s the story of three queer men who face the unravelling of the world in a cataclysmic climatic collapse. Luthando’s environmental activism leads him to a clash with the government, while his life partner, Viwe, becomes embroiled in religious end-of-days fanaticism. And their friend Malcolm is worried that his work in the technological augmentation of human memory is being used for sinister purposes.
Mackay, who previously wrote for MambaOnline, has had his short stories published in journals and the anthologies Queer Africa and Queer Africa II. He holds an MA in Politics from Edinburgh University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Raised in Joburg, he now lives in Cape Town.
We spoke to Mackay about his debut “cli-fi” novel, what makes a queer book queer and how his passion for writing evolved.
It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way has been really well received. Were you expecting this kind of response?
It’s weird. I don’t think I allowed myself to expect anything. I was so focused on getting the book finished, on getting it to say what I wanted it to say, and then getting it published, that I didn’t really engage with how people would feel about it. There was this moment, when I first held a physical copy of it in my hands, when it suddenly hit me that people were going to read this thing – and I almost had a panic attack! I poured so much of myself into