New Literatures XVII - Africa

Authors

Margaret Daymond, University of KwaZulu-Natal
Antonio Simoes da Silva, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

90155

Publication Details

Daymond, M. & Simoes da Silva, A. "New Literatures XVII - Africa." The Year's Work in English Studies 91 .1 (2014): 1046-1100.

Abstract

For a number of reasons, 2012 work from and on West Africa is only tangentially represented in this volume. Major works will be reviewed in the subsequent year’s work. Dennis Walder’s focus in Postcolonial Nostalgias: Writing, Representation, and Memory, which has just been issued in paperback, takes him beyond the familiar line-up of writers in postcolonial studies and spans several African literary zones. He suggests that ‘nostalgia’ is important because it can prompt exploration of ‘the uncertain zone between memory and history’ (p. 2) from which a productive connection with the future may be forged. His interest arises from personal history (he is a descendant of nineteenth-century German migrants to Southern Africa), and extends to other ‘contemporary figures whose links with earlier times and places have been severed by migration or displacement’ (pp. 2–3). ......