Search results for ""Author Craig Mackenzie""

The the indispensable guide to the life and work of Don Maclennan - one of South Africa’s most incisive and important poets of the last few decades. No one who encountered Don Maclennan (1929-2009) during the more than three decades of his teaching career at Rhodes University is likely to forget the piercing appraisal of his blue eyes, the penetration of his questions, or the incisiveness of his opinions. He eventually largely eschewed the pretensions of academic publishing. His favoured medium became the short, pithy talk, rich with original aphorisms on the value of story and poem, and laden with quotations from his favourite writers. And of course poetry. Don published or printed some twenty volumes of poetry, increasingly spare and lapidary, increasingly concerned with his approaching death. Though sometimes disturbing, they above all celebrated the simple fact of being alive, being in love, being sensuous. He knew that there is “no other world” than this one. There is probably no poetry in South Africa’s national oeuvre more thoughtfully authentic than his.

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From the outset, South Africa's history has been marked by division and conflict along racial and ethnic lines. From 1948 until 1994, this division was formalized in the National Party's policy of apartheid. Because apartheid intruded on every aspect of private and public life, South African literature was preoccupied with the politics of race and social engineering. Since the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990, South Africa has been a new nation-in-the-making, inspired by a nonracial idealism yet beset by poverty and violence. South African writers have responded in various ways to Njabulo Ndebele's call to "rediscover the ordinary." The result has been a kaleidoscope of texts in which evolving cultural forms and modes of identity are rearticulated and explored. An invaluable guide for general readers as well as scholars of African literary history, this comprehensive text celebrates the multiple traditions and exciting future of the South African voice. Although the South African Constitution of 1994 recognizes no fewer than eleven official languages, English has remained the country's literary lingua franca. This book offers a narrative overview of South African literary production in English from 1945 to the postapartheid present. An introduction identifies the most interesting and noteworthy writing from the period. Alphabetical entries provide accurate and objective information on genres and writers. An appendix lists essential authors published before 1945.

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