South African writing
Confronting South African history: Damon Galgut, Julia Blackburn, Jade Munslow Ong and Anne McElvoy discuss literature from the farm novel to the ongoing legacy of apartheid.
Damon Galgut's novel, The Promise, explores the decline of the white Afrikaner Swart family and their failed promise to their black domestic servant. The family resist giving her, her own house and her own land as South Africa emerges from the era of apartheid. Land also occupies Julia Blackburn in her new book Dreaming the Karoo, which explores traces of the indigenous /Xam people who were driven from their ancestral lands in the 1870s. And, New Generation Thinker Jade Munslow Ong has been looking at the evolution of the farm novel and the ways in which South African literature maps experiences of displacement. They join Anne McElvoy to explore the ways in which writing has charted the personal and political histories of modern South Africa.
Damon Galgut is a is a South African novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise. Two of his previous novels were shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, The Good Doctor and In a Strange Room. He has written several plays.
Julia Blackburn has written both fiction and non-fiction, including her memoir The Three of Us and the Orange Prize nominated novels The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions. Her latest book, Dreaming the Karoo: A People Called the /Xam is published on 16th June 2022.
Dr Jade Munslow Ong is a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker. lectures in English literature and environmental literature at the University of Salford, specializing in colonial and postcolonial writing and fin de siΓ¨cle cultures. She has published Olive Schreiner and African modernism.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Last on
More episodes
Previous
Broadcast
- Tue 14 Jun 2022 22:00Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 3
Featured in...
New Generation Thinkers—Free Thinking
From prison breaks to VR dinosaurs: insights from the AHRC & Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's scheme for academics.
Exploring Black History—Free Thinking
Celebrating Black History Month with a curated playlist exploring Black history
Prose and Poetry—Free Thinking
Fact, fiction, key authors and contemporary voices from around the world
Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019
Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional
CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many
CLICK to LISTEN & SEE all programmes, images, clips & features from 2017's festival
Free Thinking Festival 2017: The Speed of Life