Rebecca Fasselt

Corinne Sandwith

This book considers the key critical interventions on short story writing in South Africa written in English since the year 2000. The short story genre, whilst often marginalised in national literary canons, has been central to the trajectory of literary history in South Africa. In recent years, the short story has undergone a significant renaissance, with new collections and young writers making a significant impact on the contemporary literary scene, and subgenres such as speculative fiction, erotic fiction, flash fiction and queer fiction expanding rapidly in popularity. This book examines the role of the short story genre in reflecting or championing new developments in South African writing and the ways in which traditional boundaries and definitions of the short story in South Africa have been reimagined in the present. Drawing together a range of critical interventions, including scholarly articles, interviews and personal reflective pieces, the volume traces some of the aesthetic and thematic continuities and discontinuities in the genre and sheds new light on questions of literary form. Finally, the book considers the place of the short story in twenty-first century writing and interrogates the ways in which the short story form may contribute to, or recast ideas of, the post-apartheid or post-transitional. The perfect guide to contemporary short story writing in South Africa, this book will be essential reading for researchers of African literature.

Contemporary Trends and Perspectives

The Short Story in South Africa

Carly McLaughlin

Gigi Adair

The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature offers a comprehensive survey of an increasingly important field. It demonstrates the influence of the “age of migration” on literature and showcases the role of literature in shaping socio-political debates and creating knowledge about the migratory trajectories, lives, and experiences that have shaped the post-1989 world. The contributors examine a broad range of literary texts and critical approaches that cover the spectrum between voluntary and forced migration. In doing so, they reflect the shift in recent years from the author-centric study of migrant writing to a more inclusive conception of migration literature. The book contains sections on key terms and critical approaches in the field; important genres of migration literature; a range of forms and trajectories of migration, with a particular focus on the global South; and on migration literature’s relevance in social contexts outside the academy. Its range of scholarly voices on literature from different geographical contexts and in different languages is central to its call for and contribution to a pluriversal turn in literary migration studies in future scholarship. This Companion will be of particular interest to scholars working on contemporary migration literature, and it also offers an introduction to new students and scholars from other fields. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Rebecca Fasselt

Books

Your next favorite book is out there