South African Literature after the Truth Commission Mapping Loss [Paperback]

This book studies a broad and ambitious selection of contemporary South African literature, fiction, drama, poetry, and memoir to make sense of the ways in which these works 'remap' the intersections of memory, space/place, and the body, as they explore the legacy of apartheid.Introduction: Mapping Loss PART I: SPACES OF TRUTH-TELLING: THE TRC AND POST-APARTHEID LITERATURES OF MEMORY The Calcification of Memory: The Story I Am About To Tell and He Left Quietly A Theatre of Displacement: Ubu and the Truth Commission The Lie Where the Truth is Closest: Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull Words That Look Like Acts: Ingrid de Kok's Transfer and Terrestrial Things Irredeemable Blood, Irretrievable Loss: Sindiwe Magona's Mother To Mother Conclusion, Part I PART II: POST-APARTHEID URBAN SPACES Peace Through Amnesia: Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit The City Dissected: Ivan Vladislavic's The Exploded View Linguistic Trips: Phaswane Mpe's Welcome To Our Hillbrow Peripatetic Mapping: K. Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams Excavating the City: Aziz Hassim's The Lotus People Conclusion, Part II PART III: EXCAVATIONS AND THE MEMORY OF LANDSCAPES A Map of Echoes: Anne Landsman's The Devil's Chimney Buried Footprints: Zo? Wicomb's David's Story Burdened by the Scars of History: Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness Conclusion, Part III Conclusion

Shane Graham's compelling new study brings a thematic order to the vast and generically diverse body of literature produced in post-apartheid South African. Generously inclusive and interdisciplinary, the study is nevertheless conceptually unified by an effort to understand the connection between bodies, places, and memory: a nexus that Graham teases out in a series of deft, lucid, and judicious readings. South African Literature After the Truth Commission is an unfailingly intelligent and readable book and will prove to be an indispensable scholarly resource. - Rita Barnard, Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, authorl