Nadine Gordimer And The Rhetoric Of Otherness In Post Apartheid South Africa

Nadine Gordimer and the Rhetoric of Otherness in Post-Apartheid South Africa observes and examines several issues that are central to the South African writer’s works: the uniqueness of terror in a difficult historical period, the desire to annihilate racial oppression, and, above all, the psychological alienation provoked by racism. The analysis also focuses on literary topics that are specific to Gordimer’s post-Apartheid writings, such as the significance of multiculturalism, the status of writers, the banalisation of violence due to mass-media coverage, the reconciliation with a violent past, globalization and loss of cultural and national identity, economic exile, and migration. The book proposes in five chapters a journey into Nadine Gordimer’s novels, short stories and non-fiction that presents the reader with a multifaceted Other who is no longer specific to postcolonial and multicultural South Africa but can be identified across the globe as alterity is redefined by globalization.

Romance: The History of a Genre is a collection of essays devoted to the highly popular and no less controversial genre of romance. A genre often disregarded for its stereotypical language, shallow characters, and predictable plots, dismissed as “women’s” fiction, accused of conventionalism, romance is a genre which, after ups and downs in its millennial history, is now holding a leading position on the international bookselling market. This achievement has also been possible with the endorsement of contemporary media and modern technology, cinema, television, the Internet, etc. Much has been written in both traditional and more recent literary theory about the origins and evolution of the early forms of romance, from the classical Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and into the Renaissance and early modernity in Western Europe. A corpus, which is becoming more and more substantial today, is already available about the gendered status of contemporary romance, both in terms of the writing ethos and in terms of reader response, with theories coming from the combined areas of feminism, social sciences, and psychoanalysis. The aim of the present volume is that of noting the fluid character of the genre, with the great number of subcategories, mixed and hybrid, bringing evidence to the polymorphous nature of contemporary popular culture. This book proposes, in four parts and twelve chapters, a fascinating and multifaceted journey into the history, substance and geography of romance. From its origins to the latest developments, from its subgenres to its features, from print to film, from television to Facebook, romance comes in various shapes and colours, which the reader can fully explore. The journey in the world of romance takes the reader from familiar corners to less familiar ones: from North America, Great Britain, Romania, or Turkey, to India or South Africa. The numerous approaches to romance generate diverse data, varied analytical frameworks and interesting, fresh and solidly grounded findings.

Nadine Gordimer is one of South Africa's most prominent authors. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. TRUER THAN FICTION charts this iconic writer's post-apartheid work, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the four novels she published between 1994 and 2005: NONE TO ACCOMPANY ME (1994), THE HOUSE GUN (1998), THE PICKUP (2001), and GET A LIFE (2005). The study includes a brief biographical outline of Gordimer's life and a discussion of her long-standing status as 'the voice' of South Africa. It also provides the contemporary socio-historical and literary contexts for her work after the country's first democratic elections in 1994. The core of the study constitutes a thematic assessment of Gordimer's fiction and non- fiction after 1994, explored in the light of these contexts. Drawing upon such schools of thought as postcolonial theory, cultural studies, ecocriticism, feminist criticism and gender studies, as well as the rich critical reception of her writing, TRUER THAN FICTION illuminates the continued importance of Nadine Gordimer's oeuvre in her home country and across the world.

A Serious Genre: The Apology of Children’s Literature is a collection of essays by scholars and academics from Romania, the United States and Turkey, who investigate the value and impact of what, since the 19th century, has been called, using an umbrella term, children’s literature. The volume is the fourth in a series, which focuses on literary genres which are considered marginal or low-brow, but which have a long tradition and display remarkable versatility and popularity. Previous volumes in the collection presented the historical novel (2010), romance (2012), and fantasy (2014). In this book, fourteen essays approach children’s literature from different angles, from classical Victorian children’s books to the latest film adaptation of The Hobbit, from adult narrators of children’s stories to children narrators of adult stories. The book addresses researchers, teachers and students with an interest in literature, literary theory and genre analysis, but it will also appeal to the wider public, given the flexibility and friendly nature of children’s literature.

Apartheid and Beyond explores a wide range of South African writings to demonstrate the way apartheid functioned in its day-to-day operations as a geographical system of control, exerting its power through such spatial mechanisms as residential segregation, bantustans, passes, and prisons.

Longlisted for the 2002 Booker Prize: the compelling story of a relationship between a young white South African woman and a young Arab man