Scholars of English literature in South Africa, Britain, the US, and France explore the textual strategies by which post-apartheid South Africa reconciles the trauma and violence of the past
within the country's literary and cultural traditions. The 11 essays cover memory and the construction of identities; truth, reconciliation, resistance, and reconstruction; damaged narratives,
silenced voices, and race; and trauma, confession, and autobiographies. Among their topics are memory and identity in Elleke Boehmer's Bloodlines and Zo禱 Wicomb's David's Story and Playing in
the Light, reconstruction and resistance in the poetry of Gcina Mhlophe, settler myth in Andr矇 Brink's Devil's Valley, and transmogrifying the traumatic into the democratic ideal in Nelson
Mandela's autobiographical The Long Walk to Freedom. There is no index. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
