Sam Naidu

Crime Fiction, South Africa: A Critical Introduction

Crime fiction is an emergent category in South African literary studies. This introduction positions South African crime fiction and its scholarship in a global lineage of crime and detective fiction. The survey addresses the question of its literary status as ‘highbrow’ or ‘lowbrow’. It also identifies and describes two distinct sub-genres of South African crime fiction: the crime thriller novel; and the literary detective novel. The argument is that South African crime fiction exhibits a unique capacity for social analysis, a capacity which is being optimised by authors and interrogated by scholars.

Writing the violated body: representations of violence against women in Margie Orford’s crime thriller novels

Abstract Using the late twentieth-century French feminist notions of écriture féminine and the abject as a starting point, this article considers the various pitfalls, effects and ethical ramifications of representations of violence against the female body in South African crime fiction. How do authors reconcile the entertainment value of such representations with their aims to perform social analysis? This article attempts to answer this question by first describing how violence targeted at the female body is graphically portrayed, and, second, by assessing the effects of these visceral descriptions. Margie Orfords novels, in particular, the first in the Clare Hart series, Like clockwork (2006), which foregrounds human trafficking, prostitution and gender-based violence, will be examined. In Orfords Clare Hart series, the female detective figure, the various plots to do with assault, abduction, rape and murder, and the explicit imagery that descriptively conveys such crimes, are narrative techniques employed by Orford to address this scourge, and the patriarchy and sexism of contemporary South African society in general. The article ends by assessing whether a bona fide feminist subgenre of South African crime fiction is being inscribed by Orford.

Crimes against nature: Ecocritical discourse in south african crime fiction

Abstract Heeding Patrick Murphys call to critics, in his book, Ecocritical explorations in literary and cultural studies: fences, boundaries and field, to study “nature-oriented mystery novels … in order to understand the degree to which environmental consciousness and nature awareness has permeated popular and commercial fiction” (2009: 143), this article examines how highly successful author, Deon Meyer, has employed crime fiction to popularize ecological issues and debates in South Africa. In this article, Meyers first “nature-oriented” novel, the crime thriller, Blood safari (2009), is analysed. The main question asked is whether South African crime fiction deploys ecocritical discourse for mercenary reasons or whether its engagement with environmental issues constitutes a bona fide sub-category of ecocritical literature. The same rationale – understanding how “environmental consciousness and nature awareness” manifest in one of the most popular and commercially viable genres of fiction in South Africa today – informs the broader study from which this article is drawn. Some of the findings of this study, which includes a reading of Meyers second “nature-oriented” novel, Trackers (2011), Jane Taylors Of wild dogs, Margaret von Klemperers Just a dead man, and Ingrid Winterbachs literary detective novel, The book of happenstance, are referred to briefly. To conclude, the contribution of “nature-oriented” crime fiction to a “localised ecocriticism” is assessed.

Fears and Desires in South African Crime Fiction

In recent years the academy in South Africa and beyond has begun to pay heed to a literary category which has burgeoned post-1994. This category is known broadly as South African crime fiction. The bulk of attention has come from reviewers, bloggers, fans and authors themselves, and this may seem, to some, fitting for a popular genre often deemed ‘lowbrow’. Only a handful of scholars have engaged earnestly and critically with this category and most of that engagement has taken place in para-academic forums. There have been literary festivals (or panels at literary festivals) dedicated to crime fiction, a special issue of the journal Words Etc in 2010, a dedicated site on Books LIVE called Crime Beat, a robust and contentious debate on SLiPnet, a brief article on Media Club South Africa heralding a ‘new phenomenon’, and numerous reviews, profiles and interviews in newspapers. These have focused mainly on what has come to be known as the ‘genre snob’ debate: discussions about the artistic merit and cultural status of South African crime fiction, asking whether it is ‘highbrow’, ‘lowbrow’, credibly representative of a turbulent and crime-ridden society, or just sensationalist, escapist, marketable entertainment limited by generic conventions. One of the few scholarly articles on the subject, Michael Titlestad and Ashlee Polatinsky’s examination of Mike Nicol’s shift to genre fiction, disparagingly describes this authorial repositioning as a ‘decision to abandon high-literary interrogations of the history of apartheid violence and the agonies of transition in favour of writing popular crime fiction’. Titlestad and Polatinsky then extrapolate their view from Nicol to the entire literary category, revealing their adherence to an outmoded critical tradition which seems to deny the potency, relevance, substance, socio-political engagement, widespread readership and accessibility of this popular literary form. On the other hand, there have been arguments for South African crime fiction to be considered bona fide South African literature, some even claiming for it the status of the new ‘political novel’ in postapartheid South Africa. There have been celebrations of its propensity for socio-political analysis, its offer of catharsis and vicarious justice in an unremitting social landscape, its power to delight, and its potential to instruct. One such affirming argument has been articulated by Christopher Warnes, who, whilst rejecting

Teaching Postcolonial Crime Fiction

This chapter is a survey of teaching crime fiction in postcolonial South Africa. After offering a definition and historicisation of postcolonial crime fiction in general, the survey focuses on my third-year undergraduate course, ‘Sleuthing the State: South African Crime and Detective Fiction’. The survey includes a description of the curriculum content, teaching methods, forms of assessment and student evaluation. The chapter also contains theoretical discussion about the practical and ethical implications of teaching crime fiction in a turbulent and transitional socio-political context. To end, the chapter comments on the high points of this teaching experience and on some of the challenges encountered.

‘I don’t belong nowhere really’:The Figure of the London Migrant in Dan Jacobson’s ‘A Long Way from London’ and Jean Rhys’s ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’

In this article we compare and contrast the figure of the migrant, central to Dan Jacobson’s short story ‘A Long Way from London’ ([1953] 1958. A Long Way from London and other stories. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson), and to Jean Rhys’s short story ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’ ([1962] 1987. The Collected Stories. New York: Norton), both of which are set in London in the early to mid-twentieth century. The main argument is that these figures, as migrants in London from South Africa and the Caribbean respectively, similarly occupy a liminal space despite stark differences in class, race and gender. In both stories this liminal space is described through evocations of London as a hostile diasporic space, lacking in hospitality, and experienced by the migrant figure as a place of confinement and incarceration. Also, both stories utilize the technique of silence or lacunae when it comes to issues of specific discrimination and abuse, such as racism or sexual exploitation. For the purposes of comparison, the character Manwera from ‘A Long Way from London’ and, Selina, the protagonist of ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’, are selected for analysis. Particularly, their respective responses (Manwera’s pride and dignity, and Selina’s recovery after a breakdown, and her musical talent) to the exigencies of migration are suggestive of ‘adaptive strength’ (Steve Vertovec and Robin Cohen [1999] 2001. Migration, Diasporas and Transnationalism. Cheltenham and Northampton MA: Elgar Reference Collection, xviii), a common feature in transnational literature which attempts to celebrate liminality and multiplicity as key characteristics of a transnational subjectivity. In addition, the protagonist of ‘A Long Way from London’, Arthur, offers a contrast to Manwera and Selina, not only because of race and class, but because he is depicted as having adapted to and assimilated into British culture, while being strangely detached from and ambivalent about both homeland and diasporic home. Varying forms of adaptive strength are portrayed in both stories, but they close with intimations of bleak futures for the migrant figures. The essay thus concludes with the observation that in these two stories, the figure of the London migrant is rendered as facing further grave challenges, and that all three figures ‘belong nowhere’ (Rhys [1962] 1987, 175).

A “Horrific Breakdown of Reason”: Holmes and the Postcolonial Anti-Detective Novel, Lost Ground

Using the notion of “negative hermeneutics,” this chapter examines how Michiel Heyns’s novel Lost Ground draws on the heritage of the Sherlock Holmes stories. It argues that Heyns’s representation of contemporary South Africa necessitates a shift from the emphasis on the epistemological quests of nineteenth-century detective fiction to the “negative hermeneutics” and ontological concerns of postcolonial anti-detective fiction. An analysis of Lost Ground reveals direct intertextual and metatextual references to “The Silver Blaze,” yet the novel subversively presents a detective figure that is the antithesis of Holmes. Thus the chapter demonstrates how in postcolonial social and cultural contexts the ratiocinative process is hermeneutically inadequate and socio-political analysis comes to replace, or combine with, the feats of reason epitomized by Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes in Context

This book of interdisciplinary essays serves to situate the original Sherlock Holmes, and his various adaptations, in a contemporary cultural context. This collection is prompted by three main and related questions: firstly, why is Sherlock Holmes such an enduring and ubiquitous cultural icon; secondly, why is it that Sherlock Holmes, nearly 130 years after his birth, is enjoying such a spectacular renaissance; and, thirdly, what sort of communities, imagined or otherwise, have arisen around this figure since the most recent resurrections of Sherlock Holmes by popular media? Covering various media and genres (TV, film, literature, theatre) and scholarly approaches, this comprehensive collection offers cogent answers to these questions