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The Cambridge History of South African Literature Eds. Attridge Derek and Attwell David Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2012. 896 pp.
Book Reviews
The heterogeneity of South African society makes it difficult to do justice to the range and variety of expression present in the country's literary history. A significant part of the criticism leveled at the existing literary historiography has come from scholars who felt that English-speaking critics had misrepresented or undervalued authors and issues in their fields. A solution to this problem is to include representatives from all those fields in a multi-authored, collaborative project. Derek Attridge and David Attwell's Cambridge History of South African Literature sets out in this vein to be "the most fully representative collection of historical scholarship on the country's extensive literary production yet to have been published" (12). It includes discussion of oral and written literature in all of South Africa's official languages, though the weight of the discussion falls heavily on production in English and Afrikaans. Representativity in this context also means historical coverage: the volume is structured along broadly chronological lines from prehistory to the present, with the focus falling, understandably enough,...