Making Use of History in New South African Fiction: Historical Perspectives in Three Post-Apartheid Novels

by Sten Pultz Moslund

A study of the use of history as political ammunition and literature as historical counterdiscourse in Mongane Serot's Gods of Our Time, Mike Nicol's The Ibis Tapestry, and Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying. Moslund shows how literary engagement with the past seeks to rupture the continuity of a strongly dichotomised epistemology and through that dissolve the inherited polarisation of society. Falsification of history is exposed as constructed discourse and past simplifications of reality as sharply demarcated into homogenous self-justifying. Categorisations of Us against Them are challenged with paradox, doubt and introspection.

152 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2003