THE ART OF LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA

377pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Pietermaritzburg, 2017

First published in the USA in 2016.

A history of Ndaleni art school in rural KwaZulu-Natal, run by the apartheid government from 1952 to 1981 to train African art teachers.

"A profoundly human story of the institutional and social constraints under which African artists operated and the different ways they sought to produce beauty in the midst of oppression." Frederick Cooper, author of "Africa in the World: capitalism, empire, nation-state"

"A meditation on what happens if we examine a past that is shaped by broader historical forces (in this case apartheid) but that cannot be reduced to them." Clifton Crais, co-editor of "The South Africa Reader: history, culture, politics"

"A richly suggestive and moving contribution to South African intellectual history. Weaving in a highly imaginative way the two concepts of life and art, Magaziner opens unique pathways for research in the historical sociology of the object-worlds South Africans invented, created, and inhabited during the long twentieth century. Written with extraordianry clarity and precision, this book will appeal to anyone curious about new trends in the historiography of culture." Achille Mbembe, author of "Critique of Black Reason"

Daniel Magaziner is Associate Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of "The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in SOuth Africa, 1968-1977".