South African writing
Arts & Ideas14 Juni 2022

South African writing

Damon Galgut's novel, The Promise, explores the decline of the white Afrikaner Swart family and their failed promise to their black domestic servant. The family resist giving her, her own house and her own land as South Africa emerges from the era of apartheid. Land also occupies Julia Blackburn in her new book Dreaming the Karoo, which explores traces of the indigenous /Xam people who were driven from their ancestral lands in the 1870s. And, New Generation Thinker Jade Munslow Ong has been looking at the evolution of the farm novel and the ways in which South African literature maps experiences of displacement. They join Anne McElvoy to explore the ways in which writing has charted the personal and political histories of modern South Africa.

Damon Galgut is a is a South African novelist and playwright. He was awarded the 2021 Booker Prize for his novel The Promise. Two of his previous novels were shortlisted in 2003 and 2010, The Good Doctor and In a Strange Room. He has written several plays.

Julia Blackburn has written both fiction and non-fiction, including her memoir The Three of Us and the Orange Prize nominated novels The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions. Her latest book, Dreaming the Karoo: A People Called the /Xam is published on 16th June 2022.

Dr Jade Munslow Ong is a BBC Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker. lectures in English literature and environmental literature at the University of Salford, specializing in colonial and post-colonial writing and fin de siècle cultures. She has published Olive Schreiner and African Modernism.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Avsnitt(2000)

Humility

Humility

From Spinoza's thinking and the approach of different religions to the Dickens' character Uriah Heep and the "humble brag" - in Radio 4's late night ideas discussion programme Matthew Sweet and guests...

27 Mars 56min

Oral tradition and oracy

Oral tradition and oracy

Oracy - the ability to express oneself fluently - has been included in plans to modernise the national curriculum, with a new focus on equipping young people with the skills they need for life and wor...

20 Mars 56min

Taste

Taste

'It's all in the best possible taste'. But what does it mean to have good taste? And does pursuing good taste lead to favouring style over substance? Who are the thinkers who have considered a philoso...

16 Mars 56min

Women, language & experience

Women, language & experience

In a special programme looking ahead to International Women’s Day on March 8th, Shahidha Bari looks at how women express themselves in language, argument, poetry and art. Her guests include:Sara Ahmed...

6 Mars 56min

Authority

Authority

Is authority a justly unfashionable quality that we should consign to the past? Or does it still have a place in political and business leadership, schools, medical settings and in the home? What is t...

27 Feb 57min

Crime and punishment medieval to modern

Crime and punishment medieval to modern

How have attitudes to punishment changed over time, and what ideas about the rationale for punishment are circulating today? In Radio 4's roundtable discussion programme, Matthew Sweet and guests expl...

20 Feb 56min

Working Class Creativity

Working Class Creativity

From an impoverished neighbourhood in South London, Charlie Chaplin became one of the most significant figures in the development of cinema. More recently, TV writers like Sophie Willan and Michaela C...

13 Feb 56min

Is Might Right?

Is Might Right?

'The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must'. So claimed the powerful Athenians, according to the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides. Plato tried to demonstrate that might does not m...

6 Feb 56min

Populärt inom Samhälle & Kultur

podme-dokumentar
aftonbladet-krim
gynning-berg
svenska-fall
p3-dokumentar
en-mork-historia
mardromsgasten
skaringer-nessvold
creepypodden-med-jack-werner
hor-har
killradet
rss-nemo-moter-en-van
rattsfallen
kod-katastrof
flashback-forever
blenda-2
rss-mer-an-bara-morsa
vad-blir-det-for-mord
historiska-brott
rysarpodden