South African Literature after the Truth Commission: Mapping Loss Book

Acknowledgments vii

Abbreviations xi

Introduction: Mapping Loss 1

Part 1 Spaces of Truth-Telling: The TRC and Post-Apartheid Literatures of Memory 23

Introduction 23

1.1 The Calcification of Memory: The Story I Am about to Tell and He Left Quietly 34

1.2 A Theater of Displacement: Ubu and the Truth Commission 40

1.3 The Lie Where the Truth Is Closest: Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull 49

1.4 Words That Look Like Acts: Ingrid de Kok's Transfer and Terrestrial Things 62

1.5 Irredeemable Blood, Irretrievable Loss: Sindiwe Magona's Mother to Mother 76

Conclusion 84

Part 2 Post-Apartheid Urban Spaces 87

Introduction 87

2.1 Peace through Amnesia: Achmat Dangor's Bitter Fruit 94

2.2 The City Dissected: Ivan Vladislavic's The Exploded View 103

2.3 Linguistic Trips: Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow 114

2.4 Peripatetic Mapping: K. Sello Duiker's The Quiet Violence of Dreams 120

2.5 Excavating the City: Aziz Hassim's The Lotus People 127

Conclusion 134

Part 3 Excavations and the Memory of Landscapes 135

Introduction 135

3.1 A Map of Echoes: Anne Landsman's The Devil's Chimney 142

3.2 Buried Footprints: Zoëet; Wicomb's David's Story 151

3.3 Burdened by the Scars of History: Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness 167

Conclusion 176

Conclusion 179

Notes 185

Bibliography 209

Index 225