Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History.(Book review)

Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History

BY DAVID ATTWELL

Athens: Ohio UP, 2006.

x + 228 pp. ISBN: 0-8214-1712-6 paper.

The justifiably high worldwide reputation of Olive Schreiner, Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer, and J. M. Coetzee has obscured the much richer picture of South African culture that emerges when black writing is taken properly into account. In examining the impact of South Africa's entry into the modern world in this important book, David Attwell does not portray black writing as merely registering or rejecting that impact; he shows, in meticulous detail, how writers negotiated with modernity in its …