STORIES OF FATHERS, STORIES OF THE NATION, fatherhood and paternal power in South African literature

311pp., paperback, Pietermaritzburg, 2021

"Stories of Fathers, Stories of the Nation offers us novel ways of reading narratives of fathers in South African fiction since Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country. In this wide-ranging and illuminating account, the figure of the father becomes metonymic of the changing state of the nation and shifting lines of power, control and resistance. It is the interplay of the figural and the social, of gender and being, of the narrated and the real, that marks this finely crafted study and solid contribution to literary criticism in South Africa." Shaun Viljoen, Associate Professor, Department of English, Stellenbosch University

Novels examined include Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, In the Heart of the Country by JM Coetzee, Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer, The Smell of Apples by Mark Behr, Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda, The Quiet Violence of Dreams by K. Sello Duiker, Playing in the Light by Zoë Wicomb and Men of the South by Zukiswa Wanner.