Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction -- Andr�e Brink, Mevrou Sadie, and Me: our crooked-line stories -- Bushman Letters/Bushman Literature: usable and unusable pasts -- Schreiner's Karoo, Blackburn's Jo'burg: a literary journey, then and now -- A School Person in a Red Blanket: the case of S.E.K. Mqhayi -- Lewis Nkosi: ambiguities of home and exile -- The Potential and Limitations of Symptomatic Criticism: Ruth Miller's poetry -- Who Wins a Nobel Prize? Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee -- Who Doesn't Win a Nobel Prize? Gordimer, Coetzee, Bosman, Head -- The Power of ...Nelson Mandela: a literary consideration -- The Science of Poetry and the Poetry of Science: Douglas Livingstone's uncommon humanity -- To Be a Coconut: Kopano Matlwa to the Bard of Avon -- #RhodesMustFall!: on literary attachment and the rupturing event.

"This book reflects on the 'literary' in literature. Whether oral expression, Nobel laureates, or the rupturing event, the study adopts a style of intimacy to both its African locality and the wider Anglophone world: the world to which literature in South Africa continues to belong, albeit as a 'problem child'"--