“…In this context, Gordimer’s (1968) half-century old metaphor of “the flash of the fireflies” to describe how the brevity of the short story helps to capture swiftly changing social realities remains relevant to the postmodernist and postcolonial features of contemporary African writing. This underscores the argument by South Africa critics that the short story is especially well-suited to post-apartheid writing (Chapman, 2004; Titlestad, 2010). 3 Along the same lines, Rose-Innes herself argues that the “brief, eclectic contributions [made by short stories] also feel like a natural and appropriate way to consider South Africa now, or perhaps any fractured, various, rapidly changing milieu — particularly for someone who is wary of sweeping statements” (qtd.…”
Since its launch in 1999, the annual Caine Prize for African short stories has assumed a dominant position on the continent’s literary landscape. It has been hailed for the exposure it provides for its winners who are mostly budding writers. Expectedly, it has also attracted stinging criticism, especially for what is perceived to be its legitimization of stereotypical narratives about Africa. In this article, I examine how the two winning entries of 2008 and 2011 represent contemporary African realities and in so doing reinforce the growing significance of the prize and the short story genre to modern African literary expression. I argue that, taken together, Henrietta Rose-Innes’ “Poison” (2007) and NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Hitting Budapest” (2010), both set in cities, contribute to problematic imaginings of African futures. Bulawayo does this through her representation of slum life and dystopian childhoods in Zimbabwe while Rose-Innes’s story speculates on the apocalyptic aftermath of a chemical explosion in post-apartheid South Africa. I highlight, also, how these two narratives reflect apparent relationships between the short story and the novel in contemporary African writing as well as the increasing role of the postcolonial city as a site from which unfavourable visions of postcolonial societies are generated.
“…In this context, Gordimer’s (1968) half-century old metaphor of “the flash of the fireflies” to describe how the brevity of the short story helps to capture swiftly changing social realities remains relevant to the postmodernist and postcolonial features of contemporary African writing. This underscores the argument by South Africa critics that the short story is especially well-suited to post-apartheid writing (Chapman, 2004; Titlestad, 2010). 3 Along the same lines, Rose-Innes herself argues that the “brief, eclectic contributions [made by short stories] also feel like a natural and appropriate way to consider South Africa now, or perhaps any fractured, various, rapidly changing milieu — particularly for someone who is wary of sweeping statements” (qtd.…”
Since its launch in 1999, the annual Caine Prize for African short stories has assumed a dominant position on the continent’s literary landscape. It has been hailed for the exposure it provides for its winners who are mostly budding writers. Expectedly, it has also attracted stinging criticism, especially for what is perceived to be its legitimization of stereotypical narratives about Africa. In this article, I examine how the two winning entries of 2008 and 2011 represent contemporary African realities and in so doing reinforce the growing significance of the prize and the short story genre to modern African literary expression. I argue that, taken together, Henrietta Rose-Innes’ “Poison” (2007) and NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Hitting Budapest” (2010), both set in cities, contribute to problematic imaginings of African futures. Bulawayo does this through her representation of slum life and dystopian childhoods in Zimbabwe while Rose-Innes’s story speculates on the apocalyptic aftermath of a chemical explosion in post-apartheid South Africa. I highlight, also, how these two narratives reflect apparent relationships between the short story and the novel in contemporary African writing as well as the increasing role of the postcolonial city as a site from which unfavourable visions of postcolonial societies are generated.
“…It must be stressed that Bosman's penchant for mocking certain aspects of the (rural) Afrikaner way‐of‐life is often combined with a distinct sympathy towards this group; particularly vis‐à‐vis the effects of the Anglo‐Boer War and its aftermath on this group, that is, on the effects of their colonization. Thus, in relation to the Anglo‐Boer War itself and to the title short‐story Mafikeng road , Chapman (2011: 8) concludes that ‘even as the myths of leadership and bravery are overturned, the mood takes on the sombre resonance of Oom Schalk's (and Bosman's) close attachment to Afrikaner history. We are offered bitter insight into Boer defeat.’ The following extract from the story entitled Rooinek 20 makes this abundantly clear (again Oom Schalk Lourens is the fictional narrator, but here there is clearly no parodic intent on the part of Bosman): Then we laid down our rifles and went home.…”
Section: Herman Charles Bosman and Mafikeng Roadmentioning
confidence: 99%
“… Mafikeng road was Bosman's first and only (local) best seller in his lifetime; as confirmed by Chapman (2011: 3), ‘in his own lifetime … only one collection of his stories appeared, his own compilation Mafikeng Road (1947).’ While Mafikeng road and other collections of his short‐stories clearly ‘image’ the Afrikaans culture and, to some extent, the Afrikaans language, his novels ( Cold stone jug , Jacaranda in the night and Willemsdorp ) are also of interest for their display of the cultures and languages of the other, in the first case that of prisoners and prison slang, in the other two novels, that of Afrikaans. In the case of the last two novels, however, the representation of the Afrikaans IDG‐strand is more clearly distanced in nature and not so closely associated with the narrator (that is, there is more single‐voiced objectified discourse).…”
According to Schneider's (2003, 2007) dynamic model of the evolution of postcolonial Englishes, the phase of endonormative stabilization is ‘reflected in the emergence of a new and vigorous cultural phenomenon, viz. literary creativity in English, rooted in the new culture and adopting elements of the new language variety’ (Schneider, 2007: 50). In the South African context, endonormative stabilization is dated as beginning with the advent of non‐racial democracy in South Africa (that is, in 1994), linked, according to Schneider (2017: 188), to ‘a broadly based and generally recognized literary creativity, spearheaded by two recent Nobel laureates: Nadine Gordimer in 1991 and J. M. Coetzee in 2003.’ In this paper, this conclusion is challenged by pointing to what Brink (1976: 42) refers to as a ‘vital and viable new literature’ in English which emerged in the first half of the 20th‐century and which often had a striking emphasis on the interrelationship between English and the Afrikaans IDG‐strand; thus constituting a form of postcolonial English which arose well before the examples mentioned by Schneider.
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