Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970–1995

by Edited by Derek Attridge , Rosemary Jolly

• ISBN13: 9780521592185
• ISBN10: 0521592186
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-02-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

During the final years of the apartheid era and the subsequent transition to democracy, South African literary writing caught the world's attention as never before. Writing South Africa offers a window on the literary activity of this extraordinary period, conveying its range and its significance for anyone interested in the impact of decolonization and democratization on the cultural sphere. It brings together for the first time discussions by some of the most distinguished South African writers, with those of leading commentators based in South Africa, Britain and North America.

Table of Contents

Contributors	vii	(4)
Acknowledgements and note on references	xi	(2)
South Africa, 1970-1996: a chronology	xiii	(3)
Maps	xvi-xvii	(1)
1 Introduction	1	(13)
ROSEMARY JOLLY
DEREK ATTRIDGE
2 Interrogating silence: new possibilities faced by South African literature	14	(15)
ANDRE BRINK
3 I am dead: you cannot read: Andre Brink's On the Contrary	29	(14)
PETER HORN
4 Endings and new beginning: South African fiction in transition	43	(14)
ELLEKE BOEHMER
5 The post-apartheid sublime: rediscovering the extraordinary	57	(18)
GRAHAM PECHEY
6 Postmodernism and black writing in South Africa	75	(16)
LEWIS NKOSI
7 Shame and identity: the case of the coloured in South Africa	91	(17)
ZOE WICOMB
8 A man's world: South African gay writing and the State of Emergency	108	(15)
MICHIEL HEYNS
9 The final safari: on nature, myth, and the literature of the Emergency	123	(18)
RITA BARNARD
10 Interview	141	(8)
MIRIAM TLALI, interviewed by ROSEMARY JOLLY
11 Speech and silence in the fictions of J.M. Coetzee	149	(17)
BENITA PARRY
12 `Dialogue' and `fulfilment' in J.M.Coetzee's Age of Iron	166	(14)
DAVID ATTWELL
13 Interview	180	(7)
MONGANE WALLY SEROTE, interviewed by ROLF SOLBERG
14 Inside out: Jeremy Cronin's lyrical politics	187	(17)
BRIAN MACASKILL
15 Spinning out the present: narrative, gender, and the politics of South African theatre	204	(17)
DENNIS WALDER
16 South African theatre in the United States: the allure of the familiar and of the exotic	221	(18)
JEANNE COLLERAN
Position papers	239	(26)
17 Preparing ourselves for freedom	239	(10)
ALBIE SACHS
18 Challenges facing theatre practitioners in the new South Africa	249	(8)
MAISHE MAPONYA
19 Current trends in Theatre for Development in South Africa	257	(8)
ZAKES MDA
Select bibliography: South African literary writing in English, 1970-1995	265	(12)
Index	277