The Contemporary South African Trauma Novel: Michiel Heyns’ Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women (2008)

2020 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-165
Author(s):  
Ewald Mengel
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
South African Politics ◽  
To Come ◽  
Real Strength ◽  
The Way

AbstractAfter the end of apartheid in 1990 and the new constitution of 1994, the genre of the contemporary South African novel is experiencing a heyday. One reason for this is that, with the end of censorship, the authors can go about unrestraint to take a critical look at the traumatized country and the state of a nation that shows a great need to come to terms with its past. In this context, trauma and narration prove to be a fertile combination, an observation that stands in marked contrast to the deconstructionist view of trauma as ‘unclaimed’ experience and the inability to speak about it. Michiel Heyns’ Lost Ground (2011) and Marlene van Niekerk’s The Way of the Women (2008) are prime examples of the contemporary South African trauma novel. As crime fiction, Lost Ground not only tells a thrilling story but is also deeply involved in South African politics. The novelist Heyns plays with postmodernist structures, but the real strength of the novel lies in its realistic milieu description and the analysis of the protagonist’s traumatic ‘entanglements’. The Way of the Women is mainly a farm novel but also shows elements of the historical novel and the marriage novel. It continues the process of the deconstruction of the farm as a former symbol of the Afrikaner’s pride and glory. Both novels’ meta-fictional self-reflections betray the self-consciousness of their authors who are aware of the symbolization compulsions in a traumatized country. They use narrative as a means of ‘working through’, coming to terms with trauma, and achieving reconciliation. Both novels’ complex narrative structures may be read as symbolic expressions of traumatic ‘entanglements’ that lie at the heart of the South African dilemma.

scholarly journals READING TOURS INTO MALAYSIAN NARRATIVES: LOCALES IN THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS AND THE NIGHT TIGER

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swagata Sinha Roy ◽  
◽  
Kavitha Subaramaniam ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Cameron Highlands ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Japanese Gardens ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Way

If one has not read local English novels like The Garden of Evening Mists and The Night Tiger, one would never be able to imagine the wonders of locales depicted in these two books. One of the reasons the authors here want to visit a said destination is because of the way a certain place is pictured in narratives. Tan Twan Eng brings to life the beauty of Japanese gardens in Cameron Highlands, in the backdrop of postWorld War II while Yangsze Choo takes us into several small towns of Kinta Valley in the state of Perak in her beautifully woven tale of the superstitions and beliefs of the local people in Chinese folklore and myth in war torn Malaysia in the 1930s and after. Many of the places mentioned in these two novels should be considered places to visit by tourists local and international. Although these Malaysian novelists live away from Malaysia, they are clearly ambassadors of the Malaysian cultural and regional heritage. In this paper, a few of the places in the novel will be looked at as potential spots for the coming decade. The research questions considered here are i) what can be done to make written narratives the new trend to pave the way for Visit Malaysia destinations? ii) how could these narratives be promoted as guides to the history and culture of Malaysia? The significant destinations and the relevant cultural history of the regions will be discussed in-depth to come to a relevant conclusion.

scholarly journals Kolonialistiset välitilat Pienen pimeyden kuukaudessa

Idäntutkimus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-35
Author(s):  
Karina Lukin
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reindeer Herding ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Hybrid Forms ◽  
The Way

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan nenetsikirjailija Vasili Ledkovin romaania Pienen pimeän kuukausi (Mesjats maloi temnoty), joka on historiallinen, porojen kollektivisoinnista 1920- ja 30-lukujen Nenetsien kansallisessa piirikunnassa kertovat teos. Romaania tulkitaan kyläproosan keinoja ja keskustelutilaa hyödyntävänä tekstinä, joka nostaa esiin porojen omistamiseen ja ihmisen ja poron vuorovaikutukseen tulleiden muutosten aiheuttamia ristiriitoja sekä kollektivisointiin liittyvää väkivaltaa. Lukutapaa luonnehtii jälkikoloniaalinen ote, jossa painottuu vähintään kahdenlaisten tulkintojen yhtäaikainen läsnäolo ja niiden limittyminen toisiinsa. Analyysissä keskitytään tekemään ymmärrettäväksi poron ja ihmisen välistä suhdetta poropaimentolaiskäytänteissä ja tuodaan esiin, miten romaanin hahmojen erilaiset tavat toimia heijastavat nenetsien konventioita tai asettuvat niitä vastaan. Samalla osoitetaan, että teksti tuottaa myös sosialistisen realismin ja neuvostoliittolaisen kyläproosan perinteen mukaisia mielikuvia, ja pohditaan, miten nämä ovat osa romaanin tarjoamaa kriittistä katsetta nenetsien menneisyyteen. Colonial in-betweens in The Month of the Small Darkness The article discusses the Nenets writer Vasili Ledkov’s historical novel The Month of the Small Darkness, which describes the collectivisation of the reindeer in the Nenets national district in the 1920s and 1930s. The novel is analysed as a text using the textual and poetic strategies of the discursive space created by what was called the village prose movement. At the same time, the novel brought out the violence related to collectivisation and the ambivalence produced by changes in the ownership of the reindeer and the interaction between the humans and reindeer. The novel is read from a postcolonial perspective, emphasising at least two kinds of simultaneous interpretative models and the way they fold into each other. The analysis focuses on understanding the relationship of reindeer and humans in the practices of nomadic reindeer-herding and on explaining the differing actions of the characters and their relations with Nenets conventions or Soviet ideologies. According to the interpretation, the novel gains its critical gaze towards the Soviet past from its position within socialist realism and the discourses of the village prose movement that are, as such, hybrid forms of literature.

scholarly journals HISTORY AS A CHALLENGE TO THE MODERN TIME IN THE RUSSIAN BOOKER NOVEL

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Pogorelaya
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
The State ◽  
Russian History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Silver Age ◽  
Contemporary Novel ◽  
Literary Prizes ◽  
The Way

Held in the Silver Age extension of the State Literary Museum, the Booker Conference 2017 was devoted to the contemporary historical novel. Why is it that novelists are increasingly more likely to look for solutions to present-day problems through retrospection, invoking the long bygone or a more recent past, travelling back to the origins of Russian history and the 20th century’s turbulent revolutionary events that paved the way for our present existence? Which challenges seem particularly poignant, and where do they come from? The speakers include novelists Petr Aleshkovsky and Olga Slavnikova, critic and essayist Vladimir Novikov, and literary critics Evgeny Vezhlyan, Anna Zhuchkova, and Elena Pogorelaya. Also present was writer and historian Sergey Belyakov (Ekaterinburg) to talk about the novel Nomakh. All participants concurred that, while overcoming historical inertia remained a key challenge in contemporary novel-writing, serious progress has been achieved in recent years, judging by the shortlists and the winners of the major literary prizes.As usual at this conference, the Russian Booker’s literary secretary Igor Shaytanov was its moderator. The hosting institution was represented by Mikhail Shaposhnikov, head of the Silver Age Literature Department.

scholarly journals Narrating Emotions: Towards Deeper Understanding

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-27
Author(s):  
Jan K. Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Research Participant ◽  
The South ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
Political Dissent ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Way

Qualitative research aims at unwrapping the ordinary and the exceptional in order to bring us closer to a complete description and interpretation of life. People’s narratives are particularly effective in revealing deeper dimensions of experience and of meaning. Narratives always need to be read against the background of the empirical reality in which they are embedded. Most of the narratives referred to in this article are situated against the empirical reality of South Africa as a society in transition, still marred by inequality and inequity. One narrative, from a project conducted in the Czech Republic, shares some contextual characteristics with the South African examples—the Czech Republic is also a society in transition, previously employing institutional violence to suppress political dissent. An important aspect when dealing with intense political and social transformation is the presence of highly charged feelings and emotions. As part of the contextualization for this article I briefly argue that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996-1998) in many ways did the groundwork for a new appreciation of the sharing of emotional accounts and revelations pertaining to atrocities, injustices, and suffering. This Commission’s work prepared the way for recognition of the potential of such sharing to create a better understanding of the experience of life in a deeply divided context. In the article, I argue for the establishment of a social encounter—a concept frequently used in the micro-sociological writings of Randall Collins—between researcher and research participant in an attempt to come to deeper levels of understanding. During episodes of emotional sharing of experiences and feelings a research participant often reveals deeper levels of social interaction—these revelations have the potential to open the way for a hermeneutical process towards understanding. Dramatic recall can lead to reconstructing a story that contains all the elements of what was originally heard, seen, and felt. The article uses five examples of narratives containing moments of high levels of emotion—each example opening the way for better understanding of the experiences of the research participants.

scholarly journals RACE AND RAC(IAL)ISM, THE POLITICS OF PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP IN A LIBERAL CONSTITUTION NEW REFLECTIONS OR OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES? A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Modiri
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
African Politics ◽  
Fault Line ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
White Families ◽  
American States ◽  
South African Politics ◽  
To Come ◽  
First Time

The context of this article is a two-part investigative documentary on ‘race’ as an enduring fault line in South African politics on etv’s 3rd degree (2010) programme as well as a true-life drama, For One Night (2006)3 which explores a 30-year old ‘tradition’ of racially segregated school dances in southern American states. The events detailed in both shows resonate strongly with the essence of this article in that they both publicly engage with and challenge pre-existing ideas about race and racialism and depict ordinary citizens having to be confronted by the ongoing uneasiness of race in their daily lives. On 3rd degree, students at University of the Free State (UFS), spoke honestly about the challenges of racism they face at UFS, on campus and in the residences. On For One Night, conservative white families had to come to terms with the possibility of their children mingling with their black counterparts at the traditionally segregated school dance for the first time in 30 years.

scholarly journals Male-male relationships in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

Literator ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Crous
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Interesting Observation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Way

Kochin (2002:8) makes the following interesting observation regarding the life of the main character, David Lurie, in Coetzee’s novel, “Disgrace” (1999), and his observation will be explored in detail when analysing the novel, and in particular the presentation of masculinities: “Lurie has no relationship of depth with men. His one effort is with Isaacs, Melanie’s father, and seems to be more of a quest for the sources of Melanie’s beauty than the expression of a desire for friendship with a man.” The focus of my investigation is on male-male relationships and the way in which they impact on the other characters in the novel. What contribution does the novel make to the debate on masculinity within the context of South African literary studies?

Sutpen and The South: A Study of Absalom, Absalom!

PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. 596-604
Author(s):  
Melvin Backman
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The South ◽  
Sound And The Fury ◽  
To Come ◽  
Historical Truth

Seven years after the publication of The Sound and the Fury came Absalom, Absalom! (1936). The Sound and the Fury dealt with the fall of a family, Absalom deals with the fall of a society. The Quentin Compson of Absalom is not quite the same as the earlier Quentin: his concern is social rather than personal and his role is identified for the most part with a central quest in the novel—the quest to discover the truth about the rise and fall of his South. In its search for the truth about a whole society, the novel circles and shuttles back and forth in time, its sentences twist and strain, and its narrators attempt to recreate a past on the basis of some fact and much conjecture. Sometimes the narrators mislead unintentionally, sometimes they contradict one another, and often they are carried away by their own bias, preoccupation, or imagination. Yes, it is hard to come by truth, but still one might question whether a novel whose pitch is too shrill, whose approach is emotional and poetic, whose perspective seems unclear and shifting—one might question whether such a work presents the best way of getting at historical truth. The method of narration apparently mirrors not only the difficulty in getting at truth but the struggle to face truth. For all its straining, its complexities and obscurities, Absalom, I would conclude, is Faulkner's most historical novel.

Waiting and the Legacy of Apartheid

Matatu ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Remi Akujobi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Third World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
The Third ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Third World

With debates about the issues of liberation, centering, and empowerment dominating the African literary landscape, particularly in works written by women, it is not surprising to find that the issue of ‘waiting’ occupies centre stage in Njabulo Ndebele’s novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela (2003). Much, of course, has been written on this work, which focuses on the peculiar problems facing women in contemporary South Africa, but the object of this essay is to examine the theme of waiting as it is made manifest in the literary production of the Third-World level of South African life under apartheid. The background to this literature is infiltration, colonialism, and exploitation in the lives of simple people struggling for survival and meaning in a harsh world. Through complex negotiations, women are attempting to come to terms with their increasingly visible role as breadwinners in the absence of their menfolk. This produces unexpected reconfigurations, personal and familial. One question addressed is whether these reconfigurations represent a crisis in the relations of social reproduction or a transition to new forms of family life. The novel is characterized by elements of the fantastic and mythical woven into a deceptively simple story that scrutinizes society at its base in a state of post-apartheid hangover.

scholarly journals “The Pugachevites” by E. A. Salias in the Reception of F. M. Dostoevsky: on the Epic Character of the Russian Novel

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 92-113
Author(s):  
Nadezhda G. Mikhnovets
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Russian History ◽  
The Novel ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Russian Novel ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Further Development

The article analyzes the nature of the interaction between first-line literature and fiction in the 1860–1870s as dynamic, versatile and dialogical. It is argued that the historical novel by E. A. Salias “The Pugachevites” (1874), based on the discoveries of the epic novel “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy, testified to the process of strengthening the epic tendency in Russian literature of the 19th century. The novel by E. A. Salias was not exclusively secondary, the portrayal of the “predatory type” hero became innovative, but not deeply understood by the fiction writer. It is noted that further development was undertaken by F. M. Dostoevsky at the first stage of the creation of the novel “The Adolescent”. Its distinctive feature was the consideration of the “predatory type” in the context of the Russian history of spiritual quests of the 17th–19th centuries. The description of the stages of development of the type by F. M. Dostoevsky made it possible to come to the conclusion that the process of cognition of the Russian character, the identification of the laws of the historical development of Russia presupposed a versatile comprehension of the national foundations of life, which predetermined the epic character as the leading feature of the Russian novel of the second half of the 19th century.

The Novel as History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Brannigan
Keyword(s):  
Historical Novel ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Marked Contrast ◽  
Historiographic Metafiction ◽  
End Of History ◽  
Postmodern Fiction ◽  
The Past ◽  
The End Of History

This chapter discusses the historiographic nature of postmodern novels. The predominance of the historiographic in postmodern fiction is in marked contrast to modernism. Here, postmodernism is distinguished in fiction by its preoccupation with the past. The most striking feature of postmodern fiction is its reinvention of the historical novel. The postmodern historical novel prefers narratives of catastrophe and exhaustion to revolutionary progress or national awakening. Yet as much as it seemed to coincide with the currency of a facile notion of ‘the end of history’, the emergence of ‘historiographic metafiction’ signalled instead the revival of a critical sense of historicity, in which the fabulous and the unbelievable could make ‘history’ credible again.

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