This book reflects on the 'literary' in literature. Whether oral expression, Nobel laureates, or the rupturing event, the study adopts a style of intimacy to both its African locality and the wider Anglophone world: the world to which literature in South Africa continues to belong, albeit as a 'problem child'.

Michael Chapman is affiliated to the Durban University of Technology as a researcher-in-residence. He is also a professor emeritus and fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His numerous publications include Southern African literatures (1996, 2003), Art talk, politics talk (2006), and Green in black-and-white times (2016). He is the compiler and editor of The new century of South African poetry (3rd edn 2018).

Introduction

1. André Brink, Mevrou Sadie, and Me

Our Crooked-line Stories

2. Bushman Letters/Bushman Literature

Usable and Unusable Pasts

3. Schreiner's Karoo, Blackburn's Jo'burg

A Literary Journey, Then and Now

4. A School Person in a Red Blanket

The Case of S.E.K. Mqhayi

5. Lewis Nkosi

Ambiguities of Home and Exile

6. The Potential and Limitations of Symptomatic Criticism

Ruth Miller's Poetry

7. Who Wins a Nobel Prize?

Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee

8. Who Doesn't Win a Nobel Prize?

Gordimer, Coetzee, Bosman, Head

9. The Power of ...

Nelson Mandela: A Literary Consideration

10. The Science of Poetry and the Poetry of Science

Douglas Livingstone's Uncommon Humanity

11. To Be a Coconut

Kopano Matlwa to the Bard of Avon

12. #RhodesMustFall!

On Literary Attachment and the Rupturing Event