The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945
The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945

Author: Gareth Cornwell

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0231130465

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From the outset, South Africa's history has been marked by division and conflict along racial and ethnic lines. From 1948 until 1994, this division was formalized in the National Party's policy of apartheid. Because apartheid intruded on every aspect of private and public life, South African literature was preoccupied with the politics of race and social engineering. Since the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990, South Africa has been a new nation-in-the-making, inspired by a nonracial idealism yet beset by poverty and violence. South African writers have responded in various ways to Njabulo Ndebele's call to "rediscover the ordinary." The result has been a kaleidoscope of texts in which evolving cultural forms and modes of identity are rearticulated and explored. An invaluable guide for general readers as well as scholars of African literary history, this comprehensive text celebrates the multiple traditions and exciting future of the South African voice. Although the South African Constitution of 1994 recognizes no fewer than eleven official languages, English has remained the country's literary lingua franca. This book offers a narrative overview of South African literary production in English from 1945 to the postapartheid present. An introduction identifies the most interesting and noteworthy writing from the period. Alphabetical entries provide accurate and objective information on genres and writers. An appendix lists essential authors published before 1945.

The Columbia Guide to Central African Literature in English Since 1945
The Columbia Guide to Central African Literature in English Since 1945

Author: Adrian A. Roscoe

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 0231130422

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Columbia's guides to postwar African literature paint a unique portrait of the continent's rich and diverse literary traditions. This volume examines the rapid rise and growth of modern literature in the three postcolonial nations of Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia. It tracks the multiple political and economic pressures that have shaped Central African writing since the end of World War II and reveals its authors' heroic efforts to keep their literary traditions alive in the face of extreme poverty and AIDS. Adrian Roscoe begins with a list of key political events. Since writers were composing within both colonial and postcolonial contexts, he pays particular attention to the nature of British colonialism, especially theories regarding its provenance and motivation. Roscoe discusses such historical figures as David Livingstone, Cecil Rhodes, and Sir Harry Johnston, as well as modern power players, including Robert Mugabe, Kenneth Kaunda, and Kamuzu Banda. He also addresses efforts to create a literary-historical record from an African perspective, an account that challenges white historiographies in which the colonized was neither agent nor informer. A comprehensive alphabetical guide profiles both established and emerging authors and further illustrates issues raised in the introduction. Roscoe then concludes with a detailed bibliography recommending additional reading and sources. At the close of World War II the people of Central Africa found themselves mired in imperial fatigue and broken promises of freedom. This fueled a desire for liberation and a major surge in literary production, and in this illuminating guide Roscoe details the campaigns for social justice and political integrity, for education and economic empowerment, and for gender equity, participatory democracy, rural development, and environmental care that characterized this exciting period of development.

A Companion to African Literatures
A Companion to African Literatures

Author: Olakunle George

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-03-22

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 1119058171

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Rediscover the diversity of modern African literatures with this authoritative resource edited by a leader in the field How have African literatures unfolded in their rich diversity in our modern era of decolonization, nationalisms, and extensive transnational movement of peoples? How have African writers engaged urgent questions regarding race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And how do African literary genres interrelate with traditional oral forms or audio-visual and digital media? A Companion to African Literatures addresses these issues and many more. Consisting of essays by distinguished scholars and emerging leaders in the field, this book offers rigorous, deeply engaging discussions of African literatures on the continent and in diaspora. It covers the four main geographical regions (East and Central Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), presenting ample material to learn from and think with. A Companion To African Literatures is divided into five parts. The first four cover different regions of the continent, while the fifth part considers conceptual issues and newer directions of inquiry. Chapters focus on literatures in European languages officially used in Africa -- English, French, and Portuguese -- as well as homegrown African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, and Yoruba. With its lineup of lucid and authoritative analyses, readers will find in A Companion to African Literatures a distinctive, rewarding academic resource. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in literary studies programs with an African focus, A Companion to African Literatures will also earn a place in the libraries of teachers, researchers, and professors who wish to strengthen their background in the study of African literatures.

Finding My Way
Finding My Way

Author: Duncan Brown

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-01

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1003814557

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This book reflects on South African literature from the perspective of 2020. It emerges from Duncan Brown’s experiences of three decades of working in this field of writing and scholarship. It is a personal intellectual exploration and an engagement with the institutional history of literary studies in South Africa and elsewhere. Finding My Way also attempts to find more creative, engaging and intriguing modes of writing about literature and the humanities universally. It seeks to recover a sense of the imaginative, the literary, and the affective, not only as things to value in the literary texts we read but also as ways of understanding and reading texts, as ways of writing criticism—of registering how books make us feel, as well as how they make us think. Print edition not for sale in Sub Saharan Africa.

The Cambridge History of South African Literature
The Cambridge History of South African Literature

Author: David Attwell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-01-12

Total Pages: 1451

ISBN-13: 1316175138

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South Africa's unique history has produced literatures in many languages, in both oral and written forms, reflecting the diversity in the cultural histories and experiences of its people. The Cambridge History offers a comprehensive, multi-authored history of South African literature in all eleven official languages (and more minor ones) of the country, produced by a team of over forty international experts, including contributors from all of the major regions and language groups of South Africa. It will provide a complete portrait of South Africa's literary production, organised as a chronological history from the oral traditions existing before colonial settlement, to the post-apartheid revision of the past. In a field marked by controversy, this volume is more fully representative than any existing account of South Africa's literary history. It will make a unique contribution to Commonwealth, international and postcolonial studies and serve as a definitive reference work for decades to come.

The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English Since 1945
The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English Since 1945

Author: Oyekan Owomoyela

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2008-10-21

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780231512152

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Composed by a premier scholar of African literature, this volume is a comprehensive guide to the literary traditions of Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria, five distinct countries bound by their experience with colonialism. Oyekan Owomoyela begins with an overview of the authors, texts, and historical events that have shaped the development of postwar Anglophone literatures in this region, exploring shifts in theme and the role of foreign sponsorship and illuminating recent debates regarding the language, identity, gender, and social commitments of various authors and their works. His introduction concludes with a bibliography of key critical texts. The second half of the volume is an alphabetical tour of writers, publications, concepts, genres, movements, and institutions, with suggested readings for further research. Entries focus primarily on fiction but also touch on drama and poetry. Featured authors include Chris Abani, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Cyprian Ekwensi, Uzodinma Chukuka Iweala, Helen Oyeyemi, and Wole Soyinka. Topics range from the European origins of African literature and the West African diaspora to the development of an "African personality," the establishment of a regional publishing industry, and the global literary marketplace. Owomoyela also discusses such influences as the postwar emergence of Onitsha Market Literature, the Mbari Club, and the importance of the Noma Award. Owomoyela's portrait points to the major impact of West African literature on the evolution of both African and world literatures in English. Sure to become the definitive text for research in the field, The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English Since 1945 is a vital resource for newcomers as well as for advanced scholars seeking a deeper understanding of the region's rich literary heritage.

The Short Story after Apartheid
The Short Story after Apartheid

Author: Graham K. Riach

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2023-10-15

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1835533930

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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.

Contemporary World Fiction
Contemporary World Fiction

Author: Juris Dilevko

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-03-17

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 1598849093

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This much-needed guide to translated literature offers readers the opportunity to hear from, learn about, and perhaps better understand our shrinking world from the perspective of insiders from many cultures and traditions. In a globalized world, knowledge about non-North American societies and cultures is a must. Contemporary World Fiction: A Guide to Literature in Translation provides an overview of the tremendous range and scope of translated world fiction available in English. In so doing, it will help readers get a sense of the vast world beyond North America that is conveyed by fiction titles from dozens of countries and language traditions. Within the guide, approximately 1,000 contemporary non-English-language fiction titles are fully annotated and thousands of others are listed. Organization is primarily by language, as language often reflects cultural cohesion better than national borders or geographies, but also by country and culture. In addition to contemporary titles, each chapter features a brief overview of earlier translated fiction from the group. The guide also provides in-depth bibliographic essays for each chapter that will enable librarians and library users to further explore the literature of numerous languages and cultural traditions.

Black Consciousness and South Africa’s National Literature
Black Consciousness and South Africa’s National Literature

Author: Tom Penfold

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-10-14

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 3319579401

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This book analyses Black Consciousness poetry and theatre from the 1970s through to the present. South Africa’s literature, like its history, has been beset by disagreement and contradiction, and has been consistently difficult to pin down as one, united entity. Much existing criticism on South Africa’s national literature has attempted to overcome these divisions by discussing material written from a variety of different subject positions together. This book argues that Black Consciousness desired a new South Africa where African and European cultures were valued equally, and writers could represent both as they wished. Thus, a body of literature was created that addressed a range of audiences and imagined the South African nation in different ways. This book explores Black Consciousness in order to demonstrate how South African writers have responded in various ways to the changing history and politics of their country.

The Short Story in South Africa
The Short Story in South Africa

Author: Rebecca Fasselt

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-25

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1000562409

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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.