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 Andr 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...

Art Talk, Politics Talk looks at a deep issue, whether art should be in the service of political ends or be free to roam on its own and burgeon to the beat of the artist's perspective. Should art inform politics, or should it be the reverse? From the introductory thought-how to talk about art in a politically demanding milieu-to meditations on writers ranging from J.M. Coetzee to Nelson Mandela, Salman Rushdie to Nadine Gordimer, Art Talk, Politics Talk offers a continually surprising, consistently intellectual, and boldly original consideration of literary-cultural tradition and innovation...

This anthology seeks to understand and appreciate a major phenomenon in South African literary and political life - the rise to prominence of a Black Consciousness poetry, called the New Black Poetry of the 1970s, or Soweto Poetry. The contributions, republished here 25 years later, gain resonance in retrospect. They draw on the insights of many leading literary commentators including Peter Abrahams, H.I.E Dhlomo, Nat Nakasa, Es'kia Mphahlele, James Matthews, Lionel Abrahams, Douglas Livingstone, Njabulo S. Ndebele, and Mbulelo Mzamane. They remind us of what editor Michael Chapman identifies...