This collection establishes Wicomb as a leading critical commentator on and scholar of South African national politics and its cultural forms. The essays are outstanding. They present the most incisive, challenging and dexterous interventions in the South African cultural field and ask the kinds of questions that cut to the quick of the issues at stake in them.
— Meg Samuelson, University of Adelaide
Given the complex nature of socio-political transition, most societies struggle to define their intellectual trajectory. In South Africa we are fortunate to have Zoë Wicomb’s unerring instinct to provide informed commentary and analysis of our literary landscape.
— Mandla Langa, author of Dare Not Linger

The most significant nonfiction writings of Zoë Wicomb, one of South Africa’s leading authors and intellectuals, are collected here for the first time in a single volume. This compilation features critical essays on the works of such prominent South African writers as Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele, and J.M. Coetzee, as well as writings on gender politics, race, identity, visual art, sexuality and a wide range of other cultural and political topics. Also included are a reflection on Nelson Mandela and a revealing interview with Wicomb.
In these essays, written between 1990 and 2013, Wicomb offers insight on her nation’s history, policies, and people. In a world in which nationalist rhetoric is on the rise and diversity and pluralism are the declared enemies of right-wing populist movements, her essays speak powerfully to a wide range of international issues.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Zoë Wicomb’s South African Essays:
Intertextual Ethics, Translative Possibilities, and the Claims of Discursive Variety, by Andrew van der Vlies

PART I HEARING THE VARIETY OF DISCOURSES
o n e Tracing the Path from National to Official Culture (1991)
t wo Nation, Race, and Ethnicity: Beyond the Legacy of Victims (1991, 1992)
t h r e e Culture Beyond Color? A South African Dilemma (1993)
f o u r Reading, Writing, and Visual Production in the New South Africa (1995)
f i v e To Hear the Variety of Discourses (1990)
s i x Motherhood and the Surrogate Reader: Race, Gender, and Interpretation (1994)
s e v e n Shame and Identity: The Case of the Coloured in South Africa (1995–98)
e i gh t Remembering Nelson Mandela (2013)

PART II INTERTEXTUALITY AND THE POSTCOLONIAL AUTHOR
n i n e Five Afrikaner Texts and the Rehabilitation of Whiteness (1997–98)
t e n J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace: Translations in the Yard of Africa (2002)
e l e v e n Rereading Gordimer’s July’s People (2005, 2007)
t w e lv e Natural Narrative and Tall Tales: Remembering District Six (2006, 2012)
t h i r t e e n “Good Reliable Fictions”: Nostalgia, Narration, and the Literary Narrative (2011)
f o u r t e e n Identity, Writing, and Autobiography: The Case of Bessie Head’s The Cardinals (1994)
f i f t e e n Setting, Intertextuality, and the Resurrection of the Postcolonial Author (2004, 2005)
s i x t e e n Coetzee’s Slow Man and the Real: A Lesson in Reading and Writing (2009)

PART III INTERVIEW
Intertextualities, Interdiscourses, and Intersectionalities: An Interview with Zoë Wicomb, conducted
by Andrew van der Vlies
a p p e n di x 1. Transcript of Boeta Dickie in Conversation
a p p e n di x 2. Translated Transcript of Boeta Dickie in Conversation

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Zoë Wicomb is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Strathclyde and was an inaugural recipient of the Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize.

Andrew van der Vlies is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Postcolonial Studies at Queen Mary University of London and Extraordinary Associate Professor at the University of the Western Cape.

This collection establishes Wicomb as a leading critical commentator on and scholar of South African national politics and its cultural forms. The essays are outstanding. They present the most incisive, challenging and dexterous interventions in the South African cultural field and ask the kinds of questions that cut to the quick of the issues at stake in them.
— Meg Samuelson, University of Adelaide
Given the complex nature of socio-political transition, most societies struggle to define their intellectual trajectory. In South Africa we are fortunate to have Zoë Wicomb’s unerring instinct to provide informed commentary and analysis of our literary landscape.
— Mandla Langa, author of Dare Not Linger