Engaging with Literature of Commitment. Volume 1

Book excerpt: This collection ranges far and wide, as befits the personality and accomplishments of the dedicatee, Geoffrey V. Davis, German studies and exile literature scholar, postcolonialist (if there are ‘specialties’, then Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, Black Britain), journal and book series editor.... Themes covered include publishing in Africa, charisma in African drama, the rediscovery of apartheid-era South African literature, Truth and Reconciliation commissions, South African cinema, children’s theatre in England and Eritrea, and the Third Chimurenga in literary anthologies. Surveyed are texts from Botswana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Writers discussed (or interviewed: Angela Makholwa) include Ayi Kwei Armah, Seydou Badian, J.M. Coetzee, Chielo Zona Eze, Ruth First, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Bessie Head, Ian Holding, Kavevangua Kahengua, Njabulo Ndebele, Lara Foot Newton, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o/Micere Githae Mugo, Sol Plaatje, Ken Saro–Wiwa, Mongane Wally Serote, Wole Soyinka, and Ed¬gar Wallace, together with essays on the artist Sokari Douglas Camp and the filmmaker Rayda Jacobs. Because Geoff’s commitment to literature has always been ‘hands-on’, the book closes with a selection of poems and an entertaining travelogue/memoir.