Die boodskap van die Nuwe Testament is dat Jesus die straf vir die mens se sonde op Hom geneem en vryspraak verwerf het vir diegene wat in Hom glo. Hierdie geloof in die plaasvervangende lyding van Jesus laat vrae by baie mense ontstaan. Was die wrede dood van Jesus nodig? Waarom vergewe God nie onvoorwaardelik, sonder om ’n offer te eis nie? Is God die Vader beperk in sy vergewensgesindheid? Die geloof in hemel en hel wek angs en twyfel by vele – angs vir die hel en twyfel of hulle die hemel sal ‘haal’. Kan ’n God van liefde, die God wat deur die Christelike Kerk verkondig word, so iets oor sy hart kry?

Die skrywer het geen pretensie dat hy die finale antwoord op al hierdie vrae het of dat hy die ryke betekenis van die lewe, sterwe en opstanding van Jesus kan uitput nie, maar hy hoop van harte dat die gedagtes wat volg, tog lig sal bring vir mense wat met hierdie vrae worstel.

What happens when we cross a significant boundary? We step into an unsettling in-between zone, where we have to abandon accepted structures and truths. Yet this liminal zone can also open up possibilities for inner transformation, leading to the birth of a new sense of fellowship. Since 1994, South Africans have been experiencing the anxieties of old structures breaking down and of new ones being built - a process that South African authors have been powerfully representing and questioning. Beyond the Threshold analyzes the transformative powers of liminal states and hybridizing processes in literature. Its authors discuss a wide range of intriguing liminal characters, dangerous liminal situations, and unique transformations in recent books mainly from South Africa. These books tell the compelling stories of marginal characters, giving their stories moral authority while exploring their transformative possibilities.

In Storyscapes we listen carefully to what South African writers reveal about themselves and their relations to South African space since the democratic transition of 1994. One main focus is the power of stories to uncover contradictory processes and investments of identity and to point readers toward a more meaningful life. Another main focus is the complexities of the post-colonial understanding of South African land, landscape, and space. Space in relation to race, class, and gender identity figures prominently in analyses and comparisons of diverse South African texts, such as Breyten Breytenbach's Dog Heart, Andre Brink's Imaginings of Sand, as well as the important South African subgenre of the farm novel. Questions of black or hybrid identity are highlighted by confronting older texts with new ones by black and women writers such as A.H.M. Scholtz and E.K.M. Dido. These texts - and a number of Afrikaans texts that are less well-known in the English-speaking world - are set in the wider frameworks of postcolonial criticism and global issues of cultural identity.