Harmonie is a prequel and sequel to that brilliant novel, Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. The novel raises several questions that it doesn’t answer. This story is an attempt to work out what might have taken place had Dickens ever travelled to Africa, a place too remote to be more than utilized as strange in his novels. Mrs Jellyby, for example, neglects her poor children, to waste time and energy on her fantasy project in ‘Borrioboolaga’. This small tribute to Dickens looks at Our Mutual Friend from the Southern African end of the telescope.

The story follows the journey of John Harmon, ‘The Man From Somewhere’, back to his first home in the Cape, the ‘Place where the Wine Comes From’. The murders that Dickens describes are the first of a series that confront John and Bella after their marriage, when they set off to try to find what became of John’s mother, who disappeared when he was a child. On the voyage home they become embroiled in unexpected violence. It’s the height of the Empire, when moral and Christian missions cover mercenary motives and greed. It’s also a time of instability: rebellion in Ireland; the Xhosa Wars and the Anglo-Boer war in Africa; poverty and unemployment in England; revolution in Europe.

John encounters several characters from other novels, who are every bit as real as he himself is. The story ends at the turn of the new century; some fires have been put out, but as Joseph Conrad said, they will always spring up elsewhere. Can the world become a better place?