UP English lecturer and author Jarred Thompson chats about the refreshing angle of his doctoral theses and his acclaimed novel, The Institute for Creative Dying.

It is quite a revelation to hear what University of Pretoria (UP) English lecturer Jarred Thompson has chosen as the topic of his PhD: he is exploring “post-euphoric South Africa”, which he describes as “tracing the continuities and disruptions of good feelings in post-apartheid South Africa”.

 Good feelings about living in South Africa today? Not only is it a rare expression, but it seems an about-turn from the subject of Thompson’s recently published debut novel. The Institute for Creative Dying (published by Picador Africa and internationally by Afritondo Media and Publishing) is ‒ as the title suggests ‒ ostensibly about death. It tells of five strangers who come to a house in Northcliff, Johannesburg to “discover an end to life as they’ve known it” as the blurb states.

 Thompson has been hailed as “one of the most promising voices on the African continent” and “one of South Africa’s most daring young writers”. His novel has been described as “brilliant, daring and ambitious” and “macabre, weird, zany and decidedly ominous”. The Institute for Creative Dying is an intense read, with one scene bordering on the grotesque. But it is not gloomy. Thompson wrote about it in the Sunday Times, saying: “Buried inside my novel’s preoccupation with mortality is an interest in transformation and how characters go about adapting to the unstable ground beneath their feet.” In a #UPisLit video he said: “It’s most of all a visceral celebration of life.”

 The life it celebrates is contemporary South Africa. Everything and everyone are recognisable. The setting is complete, with loadshedding, beggars with toddlers at the robots and at suburban doors asking for food, Instagram influencers, and neighbourhood WhatsApp groups. Add characters, that seem so real one can almost see them in action, within a dramatic context where the past impacts on the present as it creeps towards an uncertain future, and one wonders how long it will take before someone snaps up the film rights.

 This ability of Thompson’s to pinpoint and capture the essence of South African urban life is now the essence of his PhD. His thesis explores South African’s changing happiness as represented in popular culture, film and literature, from the comedy of Trevor Noah to the DStv reality series Living the Dream with Somizi to satirist Coconut Kelz’s Guide to Surviving This Sh*thole.

 He feels that the focus tends to be on disillusionment, disappointment and impasse; even the literature on emotion in South Africa is always negative, he says. “But what would happen if we looked at positive emotions – in the way we talk about happiness, belonging, community, love, security, comfort and luxury – and how are the representations of these things shifting?” asks Thompson, whose PhD includes a chapter on the politics of luxury and the effects of corruption.

 Ultimately, his research focuses on “how our understanding and representation of happiness or good feelings have changed over time”. In many ways, Thompson embodies this exhilaration. He is buzzed up about his life right now and about his job as a UP lecturer, which he started in June last year. “Oh, I love it, especially the teaching aspect,” he says.

 He particularly appreciates being on the New Generation Academic Programme (nGAP). Established in 2015, the nGAP recruits highly capable scholars as new academics, and guides them for three years with a reduced workload and consistent mentoring. His mentor is Professor Corinne Sandwith.

 “My mentoring process is more of a conversation,” he says. “Last week I had my first honours seminar and I could share my reflections on it.”

 Thompson knew from his undergraduate days – at Alabama University in the US, where he had a tennis scholarship – that academia was the route he wanted to take. Now, at 30, he is on track. Although reading was part of his family’s culture and was enforced (during school holidays Thompson and his brother had to read for one hour a day before being allowed to play PlayStation), Thompson was first attracted to writing in his early teens. Even then he wasn’t scared to delve into sensitive topics, such as his awareness of his sexuality as a gay man.

 “I was always good with language and excelled in English, and when I started feeling friction between my sexuality and my religion, I turned to poetry as a way to express how I felt in the world and the contradiction that I saw in religion,” he says. “Writing poetry allowed me the space to question things, to draw new insights, to play with imagery, and I found it to be fun.”

 He was encouraged by his English teacher at Sacred Heart College in Johannesburg, Catharina Roux, whom he thanks in the novel’s acknowledgments of his book for having “stoked the spark from the beginning”. But it took a while before he studied writing formally. By the time he graduated with his Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in December 2022, he had done a master’s in English at the University of Johannesburg (UJ).

 The Institute for Creative Dying was completed as part of his Wits MA. He had already been recognised for his writing, having won the 2020 Afritondo Short Story Prize for Good Help is Hard to Find, praised by the judges as a “wry, subversive take on suburbia and its secrecies”. And he was the runner-up for the international Dream Foundry’s 2021 writing contest for speculative fiction. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published in various journals, and he was UJ’s top English honours student in 2017.

 Published in February, The Institute for Creative Dying has already had a fair amount of attention. This includes a preview in The Johannesburg Review of Books, two articles in News.24, interviews on Radio 702 and on Spotify podcast A Readers’ Community, and participating in a panel on queer storytelling at Bridge Books in Joburg. Another Joburg independent bookstore, Love Books, hosted his packed launch, followed by a launch in the Merensky Library at UP, and another on the Cheeky Natives literary podcast.

 Why explore death? Thompson says he wanted to “expose and make explicit the interweaving between life and death”. His inspirations were his own experience of tennis injuries, which showed him how a failing body can impact one’s sense of self, and “being witness to the gradual degradation” of his maternal grandmother, who is suffering with emphysema and Alzheimer’s.

 He has an idea for a satirical novel about political spokespeople, and for a collection of stories of differing genres, from thriller to comedy. That’s all on hold for now.

 “The PhD requires everything from me,” Thompson says.

Listen to Thompson’s one-minute commentary on his novel at www.youtube.com/watch?v=S59Yp7ZB7ek