Literary Transactions in South Africa

Interspersed with nuggets of oft-overlooked or unfamiliar archival material, Michael Chapman’s Literary Transactions in South Africa, is a pivotal read, a tour de force of literary scholarship and the politics of interpretation. The culmination of a lifetime of critical engagement and teaching, the book seamlessly delivers its declared aim: ‘to explore, afresh, significant “moments” of the past in relation to current debate,’ bringing literary history and South African literary production right up to your doorstep and climaxing in an interrogatory discussion of the ‘glocal’ ‘posts-,’ viz. ‘After Coetzee – After Postcolonialism.’ No-one will regret the making of space on his or her overcrowded bookshelf for this ‘must read’, ‘must have’ publication * Rosemary Gray, Professor Emerita of English, University of Pretoria, South Africa * South African literature is not only gifted with some of the world’s foremost contemporary fiction writers, but also one of its most lucid critics. Michael Chapman achieves in Literary Transactions in South Africa nothing less than the reinvention of a canon post-decoloniality. From Zulu praise poetry to Zoë Wicomb’s prose, his reassessments of the relation between work and interpretation glimmer with profound insight. * Oscar Hemer, Professor Emeritus of Journalistic and Literary Creation, Malmö University, Sweden *