Reconsiderations: South African Indian Fiction and the Making of Race in Postcolonial Culture

This book investigates contemporary South African Indian fiction, examining how this literature gives rise to new ways of thinking about South African culture. The dramatic changes that South Africa has experienced in recent years have prompted fresh ways of understanding its cultural history, which move beyond ideas based on integration. South African Indian fiction offers a different lens through which to view the tangled and complex forms of interdependency that mark both South African and transnational cultures broadly. In Reconsiderations, South African Indian fiction is read as a model for an intellectually integrated cultural formation. Instead of focusing on ideas of embodiment and difference, South African Indian fiction pivots on the conception of race as a social category shaped by its historical roots. The study spans the movement of Indians to South Africa during the 19th century, covering issues of migration, diaspora, transnationalism, hybridity, difference, and a blurring of boundaries in post-apartheid fiction.