The fiction of J.M. Coetzee is always formally daring, brave in its social critique and its refusal to play by the rules.
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Articles on South African literature
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The solo journey of a queer, black woman across the continent makes fascinating reading.
From domestic worker to matriarch of South African literature, the book is a reflection on her writing journey.
The activist and writer has been erased from South Africa’s history - but new academic work seeks to restore his voice.
Challenging myths about heterosexual white South African men, Prinsloo published four books of short stories in 12 years.
Buys, the award-winning novel by Willem Anker, uses lines without credit from the Irish writer - not the first such literary controversy it has raised.
Abundantly talented and flawed, apartheid-era writer Can Themba wasn’t afraid to put his body on the line for a story.
Female Fear Factory by Pumla Dineo Gqola sees gender violence as a sophisticated ecosystem kept alive by socially manufactured fear.
Set in the music wars of Lesotho, the new novel by the South African author tells of a wandering minstrel whose hit song leads to his downfall.
Lesotho’s famo music is known for the use of accordions - and gang violence. In Wayfarers’ Hymns, Zakes Mda explores this tradition.
Will white South Africa ever give up part of its privilege? This is the contentious issue at the heart Damon Galgut’s Booker Prize-winning novel.
For parents, skin colour is often a difficult subject and dealing with it through storytelling can be a useful aid.
A literary icon, her autobiographies offer a way of understanding the country’s brutal past in order to heal and move forward.
According to a new book, the friendships among women in the novel reveal its author Sol T. Plaatje’s view of effective political struggle.
In each of his novels, he explored questions that shifted South Africa’s cultural debates, especially about memory and race.
The artist’s body of work, through its very public focus on queer masculinity, offers alternative ways of thinking about what being a man is.
That none of his collections were published in apartheid South Africa testifies to the police state’s censorship.
A study of the late Keorapetse Kgositsile shows how the poet influenced black American culture. It also shows how his mother and his grandmother’s oral traditions in turn influenced him.
The life and work of seminal South African writer, intellectual and politician Sol Plaatje seems more relevant than ever. We look into some of the latest scholarly inquiry.
Top contributors
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Senior research fellow, University of the Western Cape
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Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Penn State
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Associate professor, University of the Witwatersrand
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Professor of English, University of Johannesburg
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Professor of Creative Writing and English Literature, University of the Western Cape
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Associate Professor, Department of Literary Studies in English, Rhodes University
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Lecturer in Sociology, Rhodes University
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Senior Lecturer in English, University of the Western Cape
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Senior Lecturer, Department of English, University of the Free State
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Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
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Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
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Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, University of South Africa
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Postdoctoral Fellow, Nelson Mandela University
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Adjunct Professor, Richmond American International University
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Artist in Residency, University of Pretoria
