Christopher Hope - Jimfish

Soviet Malala adjusted his red beret. ‘Nothing has changed for the masses. This so-called new regime is just the old regime in disguise. My Fiscal Fighting Force will destroy these sell-outs and traitors, these black masks on white faces.’

Jimfish was as confused as ever he had been in the days when he sat at Soviet Malala’s feet in the garden of Sergeant Arlow, absorbing his philosophy of prolo-fisc-freedo-mism. He appeared to have everything he wanted and yet he seemed angrier than ever — but now it was with those he had sworn to fight and die for.

‘Down with the Party!’ Soviet Malala punched the air.

‘Have you left your own movement?’ Jimfish asked.

‘It has left me,’ said Soviet Malala. ‘When I remind them that rage is the rocket fuel of the lumpenproletariat, what do they do? They tell me I need anger-management classes. Come and join us, Jimfish! Nothing is more important than saving the lumpenproletariat!’

‘That may be so,’ said Jimfish, ‘but I’d be happy if I could save the coelacanth.’

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg in 1944. He is the author of nine novels and one collection of short stories, including Kruger’s Alp , which won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, Serenity House , which was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize, My Mother’s Lovers and Shooting Angels , published by Atlantic Books in 2012 to great acclaim. He is also a poet and playwright, and the author of the celebrated memoir White Boy Running (1988).