South African identities, as they are represented in the contemporary South African novel, are not homogeneous but fractured and often conflicted: African, Afrikaner, `coloured’, English, and Indian – none can be regarded as rooted or pure, whatever essentialist claims members of these various ethnic and cultural communities might want to make for them. All of them, this book argues, are deeply divided and have arisen, directly or indirectly, out of the experience of diasporic displacement, migration and relocation, from the colonial, African and Indian diasporas to present-day migrations into and out of South Africa and diasporic dislocations within Africa. This study of twenty works by twelve contemporary South African novelists – Breyten Breytenbach, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Aziz Hassim, Michiel Heyns, Elsa Joubert, Zakes Mda, Njabulo S. Ndebele, Karel Schoeman, Patricia Schonstein Pinnock, Ivan Vladislaviç and Zoë Wicomb – shows how diaspora is a dominant theme in contemporary South African fiction, and the diasporic subject its most recognisable figure.

Ways of writing is the first volume of essays devoted to a critical appraisal of Zakes Mda, the award-winning South African novelist and playwright. In his plays and novels, which draw on both Western and indigenous performance traditions, Mda engages with the history of southern Africa during and after apartheid. Writing from a position of exile, as well as from within his native country, he examines the lives of ordinary people and the ways in which they come to terms with the effects of apartheid. Mda has distinguished himself not only as a playwright and novelist, but also as a literary and cultural theorist and activist. He is a significant voice among the many in contemporary South Africa that exploit innovative forms to explore a culture in transition. This title demonstrates the wide range of both Mda's work and its critical reception, with discussions of his fiction and drama by scholars from South Africa, Europe and the USA. The essays reinforce the impression of an original and challenging writer whose creative skills have been used to focus attention on the plight of the underprivileged. This volume provides stimulating reading to anyone with an interest in Zakes Mda, in particular, and in South African writing in general.