Land and Nationalism in Fictions from Southern Africa

James Graham

 

Synopsis

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 perspectives—cultural materialist, feminist and ecocritical—this book offers new ways of thinking about the relationship between literature, politics and the environment in Southern Africa.

Review

A compelling comparative study of nationalism which goes beyond our conventional understanding of it as a derivative discourse... one of the first to draw attention to the themes common to Zimbabwe and South Africa. –James Ogude, Wits University

Author

Dr James Graham is a senior lecturer at Middlesex University. His research aims at understanding and critiquing the spectacular (re)emergence of 'world literature' in the Anglo-American academy.