Since the first South African novel, The Story of an African Farm -- a beautifully rendered account of daily life in the harsh Karoo -- was written in 1883 by Olive Schreiner, the literature produced in this southern tip captured the imagination of its colonizers with its evocation of a bleak landscape and tough survival. This reached its apotheosis with the advent of the "Jim-comes-to-Jo'burg novel," a phrase coined by Nadine Gordimer to describe the plot in which a naive rural African moves into the corrupt and evil urban landscape -- the most famous example being Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country. Lesser-known and more devastating is the work of Sol Plaatje, founding ANC member, who wrote Native Life in South Africa, about the devastation of the Land Act in 1916. Even our best-known imports -- Nadine Gordimer, whose awards have included a Booker and a Nobel Prize (read The Conservationist, The House Gun, or The Burger's Daughter), and the other double-Booker-prize winner, J. M. Coetzee -- deal with the painful issues surrounding race, usually with love across the color bar; Coetzee's novels in particular explore the painful constraints of humanity when saturated in the racist fears of the Dark Continent. A personal favorite remains Age of Iron, in which a white woman who is dying of cancer befriends the black tramp living in her garden. Ironically it is this theme that is bound to win awards for the latest offering from the superbly talented Afrikaans writer Marlene van Niekerk: Agaat features the relationship between a mute 67-year old woman dying of ALS motor neuron disease and her "colored" nurse, Agaat. It is political in some sense, but mostly it is a psychological analysis of a relationship that reverberates on many levels with the reader.
For a political overview of the country, packaged as a rollicking read, you can't go wrong with Richard Calland (who contributes the essay "South Africa Today" in the appendix of this book), who recently published Anatomy of South Africa. And anything written by Allistair Sparkes, a superb political analyst, is a joy to read.
Political autobiography often provides the most direct insights into the complex past of South Africa, and there is no shortage here. Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom is an obvious choice, as is -- if you can stand the harrowing truth -- Country of My Skull, Afrikaans poet Anjie Krog's account of her work as a journalist reporting on the Truth Reconciliation Commission. Tutu has written an autobiography too, but look for the book by his successor, Njongonkulu Ndungane: A World without a Face: A Voice from Africa provides an excellent analysis of the challenges facing the country, and how the West exacerbates many of the problems. Other, less intense reads worth looking into are Fred Khumalo's debut novel, Bitches Brew, and Kopano Matlwa's Coconut, both winners of the EU Literary Awards, as well as Dog Eat Dog, by hip newcomer Niq Mhlongo, dubbed the "voice of the kwaito generation." If you like poetry, Gcina Mhlope is one of the country's most beloved poets; purchase Love Child and see why. If you'd like to dip into a compendium of South Africa's best writers, Lovely Beyond Singing is a good choice, with snippets and excerpts from some 30 authors.
However, if all you want to do is escape with a good crime thriller that happens to be set in South Africa, pick up anything written by Deon Meyer (Dead at Daybreak is particularly good), or Margie Orford's Like Clockwork, in which her heroine, Clara Heart, tracks a serial killer in Cape Town. Or opt for light humor with Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, set in Botswana.
