South African literature

The founder of South African literature in English was Thomas Pringle (1789-1834), who published lyric poetry and the prose Narrative of a Residence in South Africa (1834). More recent poets are Roy Campbell, Francis Carey Slater (1876-1959), Guy Butler (1918- ), Sydney Clouts (1926-82), Douglas Livingstone (1932- ), and Jeremy Cronin (1949- ). The founder of South African fiction was Olive Schreiner, whose novel Story of an African Farm (1883) sought to establish the South African context as the norm rather than the exotic. Later writers of fiction include Sarah Gertrude Millin (regarded as the arch-racist of South African literature in English), Pauline Smith, William Plomer, Laurens van der Post, Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer (winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991), André P Brink, and J M Coetzee. Preeminent among South Africa's playwrights is Athol Fugard.

Black South African writers include Sol Plaatje, author of Mhudi (1930), the first novel in English by a black South African; Peter Abrahams; Esk'ia Mphahlele; Lewis Nkosi; Njabulo Ndebele (1948- ), and Mongane Wally Serote (1944- ).

Original writing in Afrikaans developed rapidly after the South African War (1899-1902), and includes works by the lyricists C Louis Leipoldt (1880-1947), Jan Celliers (1865-1940), and Eugène Marais (1871-1936); the satirical sketch and story writer C J Langenhoven; the student of wildlife ‘Sangiro’ (A A Peinhar), author of The Adventures of a Lion Family, which became popular in English translation; the novelist Etienne Leroux (1922- ); and the poet Ingrid Jonker (1933-1965). Probably best-known of Afrikaner writers is André P Brink, a key figure of the Sestigers (‘people of the sixties’) who sought to challenge the Afrikaner's literary tradition by tackling previously taboo subjects; Brink now writes more in English than Afrikaans.

South African writers have had to position themselves in relation to their country's history of colonialism, segregation, and apartheid; this has often produced a white literature of liberal concern and a black literature of protest, and has raised the literature's international profile. Key motifs and themes include the interracial love affair, the story of the rural African who encounters the city for the first time, and the conflict between private life and public political commitment. Since the demise of apartheid, much South African writing has been concerned with themes of truth and reconciliation, and (in Ndebele's phrase) with the ‘rediscovery of the ordinary’.

See also African literature.