商品詳細

Bastard Literature: Rethinking Afrikaans Literary History in the Contact Zone offers a new history of Afrikaans literature, tracing its development from the colonial contact zone to the digital age. Rather than presenting a unified national tradition, it explores a literature formed through cultural mixing, translation, conflict and exchange.

Moving between literary works and their historical conditions, the book examines how changing forms give expression to changing experiences. It follows the emergence of Afrikaans from diverse communities, the consolidation of a national canon, and the challenges posed by modernism, apartheid, feminist and black writing, and democratic transformation. Throughout, it reveals a recurring tension between multiple, intersecting traditions and attempts to impose a single cultural identity.

Bringing canonical texts and marginalised voices into a shared account, this book places Afrikaans literature within wider debates about colonialism, nationalism and world literature. It offers readers a framework for understanding how literary traditions emerge, acquire authority and are repeatedly reshaped through cultural contact.