The South African Short Story in English, 1920-2010


Book Description

Through detailed close readings alongside investigations into the history of print culture, Marta Fossati traces the development of the South African short story in English from the late 1920s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. She examines a selection of short stories by important Black South African writers (Rolfes and Herbert Dhlomo, Peter Abrahams, Can Themba, Alex La Guma, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Ahmed Essop, and Zoë Wicomb) with an alertness to the dialogue between ethics and aesthetics performed by these texts. This new history of Black short fiction problematises and interrogates the often-polarised readings of Black literature in South Africa that can be torn between notions of literariness, protest, and journalism. Due to material constraints, short fiction in South Africa circulated first and foremost through local print media, which Fossati analyses in detail to show the cross-fertilisation between journalism and the short story. While rooted in the South African context, the short stories considered also hold a translocal dimension, allowing us to explore the ethical and aesthetic practice of intertextuality. These are writings that complicate the aesthetics/ethics binary, generic classifications, and the categories of the literary and the political. Theoretically eclectic in its approach, although largely underpinned by a narratological analysis, The South African Short Story in English, 1920-2010: When Aesthetics Meets Ethics offers a fresh perspective on the South African short story in English, spotlighting several hitherto marginalised figures in South African literary studies.




The Short Story in South Africa


Book Description

This book considers the key critical interventions on short story writing in South Africa written in English since the year 2000. The short story genre, whilst often marginalised in national literary canons, has been central to the trajectory of literary history in South Africa. In recent years, the short story has undergone a significant renaissance, with new collections and young writers making a significant impact on the contemporary literary scene, and subgenres such as speculative fiction, erotic fiction, flash fiction and queer fiction expanding rapidly in popularity. This book examines the role of the short story genre in reflecting or championing new developments in South African writing and the ways in which traditional boundaries and definitions of the short story in South Africa have been reimagined in the present. Drawing together a range of critical interventions, including scholarly articles, interviews and personal reflective pieces, the volume traces some of the aesthetic and thematic continuities and discontinuities in the genre and sheds new light on questions of literary form. Finally, the book considers the place of the short story in twenty-first century writing and interrogates the ways in which the short story form may contribute to, or recast ideas of, the post-apartheid or post-transitional. The perfect guide to contemporary short story writing in South Africa, this book will be essential reading for researchers of African literature.




The Postmodern Short Story


Book Description

Short stories are usually defined in terms of characteristics of modernism, in which the story begins in the middle, develops according to a truncated plot, and ends with an epiphany. This approach tends to ignore postmodernism, a movement often characterized by a negation of objective reality where plots are seemingly abandoned, surfaces are extraordinary, and symbols turn inward on themselves. This book examines postmodern forms and characteristic themes by analyzing a group of short stories that make use of postmodern narrative strategies, including nonfictional fiction, gender profiling, and death as an image. The volume begins with a discussion of the blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction in the short story and imaginative personal essay. It then looks at the role of women in works by such authors as Sandra Cisneros, Leslie Marmon Silko, Joyce Carol Oates, and Lorrie Moore. This is followed by a section of chapters on postmodern masculinity and short fiction. The next section focuses on death as an image and theme in works by Richard Ford, Richard Brautigan, and James Joyce. The final set of chapters considers postmodern short fiction from South Africa and Canada.




The Short Story after Apartheid


Book Description

The Short Story after Apartheid offers the first major study of the anglophone short story in South Africa since apartheid’s end. By focusing on the short story this book complicates models of South African literature dominated by the novel and contributes to a much-needed generic and formalist turn in postcolonial studies. Literary texts are sites of productive struggle between formal and extra-formal concerns, and these brief, fragmentary, elliptical, formally innovative stories offer perspectives that reframe or revise important concerns of post-apartheid literature: the aesthetics of engaged writing, the politics of the past, class and race, the legacies of violence, and the struggle over the land. Through an analysis of key texts from the period by Nadine Gordimer, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Phaswane Mpe, and Henrietta Rose-Innes, this book assesses the place of the short story in post-apartheid writing and develops a fuller model of how artworks allow and disallow forms of social thought.




Apartheid Narratives


Book Description

In an engaging and dynamic collection of essays on South African writing, an international cast of contributors pay detailed attention to the shifting parameters of scholarly debates on apartheid and the apartheid era. Investigating a range of literary and critical perspectives on a period that shaped the literature of South Africa for much of the twentieth century, the contributors offer a rich survey. The volume focuses on internationally acclaimed writers (Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee) as well as those writers who are yet to receive sustained critical attention (Mtutuzeli Matshoba, Alex La Guma, Bessie Head, Ahmed Essop, Ronnie Govender). Apartheid Narratives will be welcomed by academics and students of South African writing as a stimulating collection which maps the literary terrain of apartheid.




Can Themba


Book Description

Mahala's biography gives insight into the life and writing of Can Themba (1924-1967), an iconic figure of the South African literary world and Drum journalist who died in exile Can Themba: The Intellectual Tsotsi, a Biography brings to life the iconic South African writer and journalist, Can Themba, (21 June 1924 - 8 September 1967) who died while exiled in Swaziland in 1967. Best known for his classic short story, 'The Suit', Themba has been somewhat of an enigma, with very little known about his personal life. This biography brings forth the voices of those who had personal interactions with him, shining the light on different aspects of his life including education, literature, journalism and political fraternities. It features interviews with prominent individuals including his former students, Abdul Bham, Pitika Ntuli, and Mbulelo Mzamane; journalistic mentees Juby Mayet and Joe Thloloe; as well as friends, colleagues and contemporaries Parks Mangena, Peter Magubane, Jurgen Schadeberg, Don Mattera, and Nadine Gordimer; in addition to artists and academics Mothobi Mutloatse, Muxe Nkondo and Njabulo S. Ndebele. Also featured in this biographical text are veteran political figures such as Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Lindiwe Mabuza and Ahmed Kathrada. Themba's intellectual acumen, scholarly aptitude and witticism are some of his most revered characteristics amongst those who had interactions with him either in person or through comprehensive reading of his works. Mahala is a master storyteller and deftly weaves together the threads of Themba's dynamic life. In this edifying biography Mahala recreates the sparkle and pathos of Sophiatown of the 1950s and the Drum era. Can Themba's successes and failures, as well as his triumphs and tribulations reverberate on the pages of this long-awaited biography.




Stewart's Quotable Africa


Book Description

The African continent is home to spectacularly expressive human beings: rebellious anti-colonial and opposition leaders, eloquent novelists, political and social activists, comical geniuses, pensive and philosophical poets and intellectuals, as well as a few raving dictators. And the body of proverbial wisdom from Africa alone could fill many volumes. Despite being eminently quotable, Africa is not so readily quoted. Stewart's Quotable Africa covers the whole of Africa - north to south and east to west - and includes memorable statements from hundreds of speakers including Nelson Mandela, Doris Lessing, Chinua Achebe, Julius Nyerere, Kofi Annan among others, as well as biblical passages and proverbs. Julia Stewart has spent over a decade collecting the 5000 plus quotes found in this book, all of them either by Africans or about African subjects.




Encyclopedia of African Literature


Book Description

The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book contains over 600 entries that cover criticism and theory, its development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers.




Fact - Fiction - "faction"


Book Description