Shameless self-promotion alert...
Before it goes off the shelves, get yourself a copy of the 7th Wordsetc journal to read my cover story on Margie Orford: the Queen of South African Crime Fiction.
An extract:
It has been 15 years since the dream of the Rainbow Nation became a working blueprint. In that time, South African literature has undergone a crisis in self-definition. The protest novel, which had been the only really acceptable form for so long, was suddenly made redundant. Many have said that the first decade after 1994 was a generally sterile period for South African writers, as we sat in bewilderment, waiting to see whether this new democracy we had given birth to would be living or stillborn. But over the past few years, South African publishers have seen what began as a trickle turn into a flood of local books, as our writers finally felt free again to write about subjects other than race. We are witnessing the re-humanising of our writers: they are remembering about love, about family, about greed and sex ... and about the dark parts of the human mind.
If the past 15 years of South African literature has been about coming to terms with our past, then it seems that we are finally starting to come to terms with our present. And our present, as we all know, is defined by crime. Thus it should come as no surprise that some of our highest grossing local writers write about murders. Deon Meyer, Mike Nicol, Jassie Mackenzie, Andrew Brown and Richard Kunzmann are just a few of the writers who are making a killing by writing killings. One writer who seems to be emerging as a major figure on the local scene is Cape Town-based krimi Margie Orford, who's third novel, Daddy's Girl (Jonathan Ball), hit the shelves this October.
For more, get a copy of Wordsetc at any good SA bookstore.
