Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site im4u.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!ut-sally!im4u!riddle From: riddle@im4u.UUCP Newsgroups: net.books,net.nlang.africa Subject: South African literature Message-ID: <453@im4u.UUCP> Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 10:33:58 EDT Article-I.D.: im4u.453 Posted: Fri Aug 23 10:33:58 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 26-Aug-85 00:46:52 EDT Distribution: net Organization: U. of Tx. at Houston-in-the-Hills Lines: 39 Xref: watmath net.books:2232 net.nlang.africa:108 Out-Back: "Bob" South Africa has produced some of the finiest writers in the English language anywhere in the past few decades. Perhaps curiously, perhaps not, the ones I have heard of are without exception strong social critics with a deep insight into South Africa's peculiar collective evils, and yet they are also able to transcend that and write beautifully about their characters as individuals. There is Alan Paton, whose "Cry the Beloved Country" and "Too Late the Phalarope" reminded me strongly of Faulkner when I read them (and in my opinion that's a very favorable resemblance!). There's Doris Lessing, who may or may not strictly be considered South African -- now she resides in Britain and I suppose is identified as a British author, but her early work was deeply rooted in "Southern Rhodesia." Her "African Stories" are amazing. There's Nadine Gordimer, whom one can't resist but compare with Doris Lessing. Like Lessing she writes wonderfully rich short stories and is especially gifted at writing about women, but hers is a younger, slightly more "modern" voice. I just read her very timely novel "July's People," about a liberal white Johannesburg family forced to flee a (hypothetical) revolution and hide out in the rural village of their household servant. Gordimer's ability to write simultaneously about the personal and the political, exposing their inconsistencies without choosing one over the other, is something more writers need to learn. And there's (forgot his first name) Coetzee, by whom I have only read the novel "In the Heart of the Country," a haunting book about madness and spinsterhood in the South African "outback". You'll note that the writers I've listed above are all white. I know that there are lots of black writers in South Africa as well, but I haven't read anything by them. Can anyone out there make any recommendations? Or are there any important white writers I've missed? --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech}!ut-sally!riddle riddle@ut-sally.UUCP --- riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle%zotz@ut-sally, riddle%im4u@ut-sally