South Africa All works

All works 50

• NovelThe Story of an African FarmOlive Schreiner · 1883The Karoo, a semi-desert plateau in the interior, is then a stock-farming country where a farm can go for months without a visitor.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelA Burgher QuixoteDouglas Blackburn · 1903The Anglo-Boer conflict seen by a burgher who does not want to fight, in a parody of the chivalric romance transposed to the Transvaal.LiteraturePublic domain
• TaleSpecimens of Bushman FolkloreWilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd · 1911A San language, ǀxam, recorded in the 1870s from prisoners entrusted to two scholars in Cape Town; it is now extinct.LiteraturePublic domain
• CinemaWinning a ContinentDe VoortrekkersHarold M. Shaw · 1916The Great Trek put on screen for the first time, in the service of the Afrikaner national narrative, in 1916.Cinema
• NovelGod's Step-ChildrenSarah Gertrude Millin · 1924A novel of 1924 that makes racial mixing a fault passed down from father to son, in a society that already keeps the races apart.Literature
• NovelTurbott WolfeWilliam Plomer · 1925Zululand in the 1920s, seen from the trading store of a white man who rejects racial separation.Literature
• NovelAn African TragedyR. R. R. Dhlomo · 1928The city and its temptations seen by a young Zulu writer trained in the mission schools, at the end of the 1920s.Literature
• NovelMhudiSol Plaatje · 1930The 1830s see the Matabele kingdom, the Barolong chiefdoms and the Boer wagon trains contend for the same high plateau.Literature
• TheatreThe Girl Who Killed to SaveHerbert Dhlomo · 1935The great Xhosa cattle killing of 1856 and 1857 and the famine that followed, reread eighty years later by a Zulu dramatist.Literature
• NovelMine BoyPeter Abrahams · 1946Johannesburg in the 1940s, a city of gold built on a Black labour force kept at a distance, shortly before apartheid.Literature
• Short storiesMafeking Road and Other StoriesHerman Charles Bosman · 1947The Groot Marico, a remote bush district of the western Transvaal, and its Boer farmers seen by one of their own.Literature
• NovelCry, the Beloved CountryAlan Paton · 1948Rural Natal and Johannesburg on the eve of apartheid, seen through a Zulu pastor who sets out to look for his son.Literature
• CinemaCry, the Beloved CountryZoltan Korda · 1952The big city and its Black suburbs seen by a country pastor, on the eve of apartheid.Cinema
• Short storiesEen-en-twintigJan Rabie · 1956not translated into EnglishA slim collection of 1956, written on his return from Paris, which brings existentialism and surrealism into Afrikaans prose.Literature
• NovelUvalo LwezinhlonziJordan Ngubane · 1957not translated into EnglishIn rural Zululand, a girl clashes with a father who wants to marry her off for the cattle of the ilobolo, the bride price.Literature
• NarrativeDown Second AvenueEs'kia Mphahlele · 1959A Black youth in Pretoria in the 1920s to 1950s, told by the man who lived it, at the beginning of his exile.Literature
• NovelSeven Days at the SilbersteinsSewe dae by die SilbersteinsEtienne Leroux · 1962A naive young man goes through a week of parties at the home of wealthy landowners, a satire of a rich and cultivated elite at the time when the novel in Afrikaans opens to modern forms.Literature
• NovelA Walk in the NightAlex La Guma · 1962A night of anger and violence among the poor Coloured people of Cape Town, under the eye of a brutal police force, in the early 1960s.Literature
• PoetryRook en okerIngrid Jonker · 1963An Afrikaner poet at odds with her father, a member of parliament in charge of censorship, in the wake of the 1960 shootings.Literature
• NarrativeBlame Me on HistoryWilliam Bloke Modisane · 1963A lively and violent suburb of Johannesburg, razed by bulldozers in the 1950s, told by one of those who had to leave it.Literature
• NovelEmergencyRichard Rive · 1964The days following the Sharpeville massacre, seen from inside the Coloured community of Cape Town, which the law holds between two worlds.Literature
• PoetryFloating IslandRuth Miller · 1965A poetry of anguish and religious doubt, written in English in Johannesburg, from the 1940s to the 1960s, by a teacher marked by bereavement.Literature
• PoetryOne LifeSydney Clouts · 1966A poet from Cape Town who writes far from the debates of his time, and who will be regarded as the most modernist of his generation.Literature
• CinemaJannie TotsiensJans Rautenbach · 1970A psychiatric clinic where an image of South African society around 1970 is played out behind closed doors.Cinema
• PoetrySounds of a Cowhide DrumOswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali · 1971In the early 1970s, the life of Black workers in Johannesburg brought to a wide audience by one of them.Literature
• Short storiesThe Will to DieCan Themba · 1972Sophiatown, one of the few districts of Johannesburg where Black people owned their homes, seen from the inside by one of the Drum journalists before the removals.Literature
• PoetryCry Rage!James Matthews and Gladys Thomas · 1972In the early 1970s, Black poetry in South Africa takes on the tone of anger, in the face of a censorship that bans whatever disturbs.Literature
• PoetryYakhal'inkomoMongane Wally Serote · 1972In the early 1970s, the poetry of the Johannesburg townships turns towards Black people themselves, in the spirit of Black Consciousness.Literature
• NovelThe ConservationistNadine Gordimer · 1974South African land, owned by a white man who understands nothing of it and worked by Black people who live from it.Literature
• NarrativeThe World of Nat NakasaNat Nakasa · 1975Black life in Johannesburg told to white readers by a journalist at Drum, before exile scattered his generation.Literature
• CinemauDeliweSimon Sabela · 1975Johannesburg and the Zulu countryside in the 1970s, in a Zulu-language film intended only for the cinemas reserved for the Black public.Cinema
• NovelVictimsArthur Maimane · 1976The townships of Johannesburg in the 1950s, where the colour line decides everything, seen through a crime and its aftermath.Literature
• CinemaHow Long?Gibson Kente · 1976Life in a township under apartheid, brought to the screen in 1976 by a Black man of the theatre, from one of his banned plays.Cinema
• NovelThe Celibacy of Felix GreenspanLionel Abrahams · 1977The childhood and youth of a disabled Jewish boy in the white suburbs of Johannesburg, from special school to university.Literature
• PoetryThe Soweto I LoveSipho Sepamla · 1977The youth revolt of 1976 and its repression change the tone of the country's Black poetry.Literature
• PoetryJol'iinkomoMafika Gwala · 1977The Black poetry of the 1970s brings Zulu music and language into English verse.Literature
• Short storiesCasey and Co.Casey Motsisi · 1978The shebeen column, a comic genre of the Black press of Johannesburg, from the 1950s to the 1970s.Literature
• NovelA Dry White SeasonAndré Brink · 1979A death in detention in the time of Soweto, seen through an ordinary Afrikaner who refuses the official version.Literature
• PoetryIt Is Time to Go HomeChristopher van Wyk · 1979The generation of poets of 1976 writes in the spirit of Black Consciousness, and laughter becomes a weapon against the language of power.Literature
• CinemaThe Gods Must Be CrazyJamie Uys · 1980A comedy shot under apartheid, which sets the clash between a San community and the modern world in an imaginary Botswana.Cinema
• Short storiesFools and Other StoriesNjabulo Ndebele · 1983Ordinary township life in the early 1980s, seen at a child's height and through a schoolteacher who has fallen from grace.Literature
• NarrativeThe True Confessions of an Albino TerroristBreyten Breytenbach · 1984The prisons of apartheid recounted by an Afrikaner, a poet writing in Afrikaans, sentenced for joining the underground resistance.Literature
• CinemaPlace of WeepingDarrell Roodt · 1986The South African countryside under apartheid, around the murder of a black farm worker whom almost everyone would like to keep quiet about.Cinema
• NarrativeMemory Is the WeaponDon Mattera · 1987Sophiatown, a multiracial neighbourhood that the regime had razed, told by one of its children who became an activist.Literature
• NovelTime of Our DarknessStephen Gray · 1988In 1980s Johannesburg, between a white school in a well-off suburb and a township in revolt, colour, desire and power become entangled.Literature
• CinemaMapantsulaOliver Schmitz · 1988Soweto in the 1980s, in the time of demonstrations and police raids, seen through a thug who has no interest in politics.Cinema
• PoetryA Littoral ZoneDouglas Livingstone · 1991A scientist responsible for monitoring the sea turns his sampling rounds into the material of a long poem.Literature
• PoetryPlain FurniturePeter Clarke · 1991Childhood memories and figures of a port on the Cape peninsula, from which the law later drove out the families of colour.Literature
• CinemaDust DevilRichard Stanley · 1992The roads of the Namibian desert and an abandoned town provide the setting for a legend of a travelling demon drawn from local tales.Cinema
• NovelDisgraceJ. M. Coetzee · 1999South Africa in the years following the end of apartheid, between the city and an isolated farm in the east of the country.Literature

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