Synopsis
Southern African Literatures is a major study of the work of writers from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique and Namibia, written at a time of crucial change in the subcontinent. It covers a wide range of work from the storytelling of stone-age Bushmen to modern writing by renowned figures such as Es'kia Mphahlele, Nadine Gordimer and Andrea Brink, encompassing traditional, popular and elite writing; literature in translation; and case studies based on topical issues. Michael Chapman argues that literary history in the southern African region is best based on a comparative method which, while respecting differences of language, race and social circumstance, seeks cultural interchange including "translations" of experience across linguistic and ethnic borders.