Kiran Desai: Det tabte land

Anmeldes af Kirsten Holst Peterse

Introduction

It is not a revolutionary observation that South Africa is at a crossroads. On the one hand things look good: Mandela is free, the ANC is unbanned, the pass laws have been officially dropped, and a constitutional conference about the final abolishment of the apartheid state and the institution of a new state based on democratic power-sharing is at an advanced stage of planning. On the other side things are not substantially dif­ferent. The apartheid state is still there, blacks still do not have the vote, and most important of all, the inequality and the resultant apalling living conditions for both blacks and coloureds are still the same. But the mood is different. It is an explosive mix of political euphoria and unchanged poverty and social inequality. In this situation one thing has changed radically: the poHtical discourse

Unpopular opinions: Some African Women writers

Women have always been upholders of tradition. This is not because of any inherent difference in intellect or temperament from men, but because of their role in society. Change, whether it be technological or social, has always reached them last because they were less educated, less prominent, less important in male-dominated society. This is true of the Western world, and it is an even more clearly marked feature in modern African society made up as it is of a mixture of traditional African and Western values. Both societies were oppressive towards women, but in different culture-specific ways. Many African societies were polygamous and patriarchal, and women had no influence on decision-making and were subject to physical violence (beatings). The Victorian version of Western civilization which reached Africa in the form of the early missionaries objected to these forms of oppression, but in turn brought their own, namely in the concept of the virtuous woman, a concept which severly limited her possibilities for sexual, emotional and intellectual expression

Loss and Frustration: an Analysis of A. K. Armah\u27s Fragments

On a first reading Fragments may appear confusing because of the broken time sequence, but looked at more closely this feature gives the clue to the significance of the main metaphor of the book and thus to its meaning

The Search for a Role for White Women in a Liberated South Africa: A Thematic Approach to the Novels of Nadine Gordimer.

The impetus for this paper, and also its centre of concern is the puzzlement, spilling over into plain irritation with which many critics received A Sport of Nature.1 The irritation centred around the portrayal of the main character, the young girl Hillela. She seems to drift aimlessly through the 396 pages, surviving mainly by attaching herself to a series of men, often, it seems, simply because they come in handy. Feminists were outraged. Critics were looking for a serious discussion about options in the deteriorating political climate in South Africa. (This is what one had come to expect from Gordimer who has increasingly taken on the mantle of white radicalism). Radicals and socialists were outraged. As I count myself among the feminists and socialists, I took this outrage seriously, and this paper is really a debate with myself about this perceived failure or defection in Gordimer\u27s authorship, which up till then I had admired. I found -at least a possible- answer by positioning the novel A Sport of Nature in the authorship and seeing it as an inevitable outcome of the thematic positions Gordimer has taken up in her previous novels, even though this seems paradoxical in view of her increasing radicalism

Modern Aboriginal Political Art

The following pictures form part of an exhibition of modern Aboriginal posters and screenprints, held at Moesgaard Museum in Denmark. The exhibition has been put together by Ruth and Vincent Megaw from the collection held at the art gallery at Flinders University in South Australia. The Danish exhibition also featured a collection of screenprints by Sally Morgan, kindly lent to us by the artist

Mzwakhe Mbuli: The People\u27s Poet

Poems and Intervie

Chinweizu Interviewed by Kirsten Holst Petersen

There are many ways of becoming famous, and you are famous as the man who quarrels with Soyinka. That takes a lot of courage; Soyinka has a reputation for being a formidable quarreller. However, you have a reputation for being equally formidable, so that when the two of you quarrel it is really a matter of the quick or the dead. What is it about your views that makes them so controversial

Cautious Optimism and a Danish Third World Literature Prize: Abdulrazak Gurnah and the ALOA Prize

Today literary prizes are the arbiters of excellence. This is both good and bad; often, in fact more bad than good, but in the case of the Danish literary prize for Third World literature, the ALOA prize it would seem to be good. It is, of course always possible to question the separation of \u27Third World\u27, \u27Commonwealth\u27 or \u27post-colonial literature\u27 from other varieties of literature, ghettorizing it in this way, but in this connection it must be important to look at the reasons for doing this. The purpose of the ALOA prize is to attract attention to literature from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania, which has been translated into Danish. The committee finds that there IS a number of excellent books in this category, but they do not get the attention they deserve, due to the large number of books that are translated into Danish every year. As a second principle, the committee also wishes to introduce new an