Land and Nationalism in Fictions from Southern Africa [Paperback]

In this volume, Graham investigates the relation between land and nationalism in South African and Zimbabwean fiction from the 1960s to the present. This comparative study, the first of its kind, discusses a wide range of writing against a backdrop of regional decolonization, including novels by the prize-winning authors J.M Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Chenjerai Hove, and Yvonne Vera. By employing a range of critical perspectivescultural materialist, feminist and ecocriticalthis book offers new ways of thinking about the relationship between literature, politics and the environment in Southern Africa.

The return of land has been central to the material and cultural struggles for decolonization in Southern Africa, yet between the advent of democracy in Zimbabwe (1980) and South Africa (1994) and Zimbabwes decision to fast-track land redistribution in 2000, it has been limited land reform rather than widespread land redistribution that has prevailed. During this period nationalist discourses of reconciliation and economic development replaced those of revolution and decolonization. This book develops a critique of both forms of nationalistic narrative by focusing on how different and often opposing idea of land and nation are reflected, refracted and even refused in the fictions.

1. Introduction: Promised Lands in Southern Africa   2. Melancholy Possessions: Nationalisms and the Land in Black Writing from Zimbabwe 1975-1989  3. Revolutionary Repossessions: Subterranean Nationalism in South African Fictions 1969-1979   4. Reconstructions: Abjection and the Re-writing of Cultural Nationalism in Zimbabwean Fiction 1989-2002 5. From Repossession to Reform: A New Terrain in South African Fiction 1990-2000  6. Conclusion

A compelling comparative study of nationalism which goes beyond our conventional understanding of it as a derivative discourse...one of thelÃ#