S. A. Lit. Beyond 2000

What is South African literature like in the new millennium? This book considers the valuable contributions that are now being published. 'Now' meaning not only post-apartheid, but beyond both Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull (1998) - the Truth and Reconciliation Commission marker - and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) - a book that for many, including arguably its author, marks a point of no return in its Afro-pessimism. Looking beyond the year 2000, these surveys include coverage of...
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What is South African literature like in the new millennium? This book considers the valuable contributions that are now being published. 'Now' meaning not only post-apartheid, but beyond both Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull (1998) - the Truth and Reconciliation Commission marker - and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) - a book that for many, including arguably its author, marks a point of no return in its Afro-pessimism. Looking beyond the year 2000, these surveys include coverage of poetry in English and Afrikaans, South African Indian writing, Zulu literature, oral performance, 'queer' fiction, and literature of diasporic and ecological concern. The book accentuates a younger generation of writers, several of whom have received critical recognition, such as Phaswane Mpe, K. Sello Duiker, Brett Bailey, Gabeda Baderoon, and Lebo Mashile. Recent winners of major literary awards - like Anne Landsman, Imraan Coovadia, and Sally-Ann Murray - feature in commentary of what is different between now to then. Many writers from then, of course, continue to be writers now, and the book does not ignore the more recent work of, among others, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, Breyten Breytenbach, Antjie Krog, Athol Fugard, Zakes Mda, Njabulo S. Ndebele, Marlene van Niekerk, Zoe Wicomb, and Ivan Vladislavic.