History and Literature: Magic Realism and Italian POWs in a South African Novel

Abstract

Summary This article explores the use of a colonial object (a novel) and generally perceived to be colonial practices (such as empirical historiography, the critical study of literature and literary theory) as tools in the ongoing process of decolonising South African minds. Using the magic realist South African novel The Long Silence of Mario Salviati (Etienne van Heerden) as a case study, with particular reference to the history of the Italian prisoners of war (POWs) that were detained in South Africa during World War II (WWII), the article investigates knowledge production through magic realist fiction and attempts to explain how the correlations and tensions between magic realist fiction and empirical historiography contribute to knowledge production and preservation on a broader metatextual level. The article aims to show how pieces of history that may be lost in the ideologically and politically driven decolonisation of history books and curricula may survive through fiction, and perhaps even serve as an effective, albeit subtle, tool for a way to decolonise the mind by creatively using instead of discarding pieces of history, objects and practices with colonial origins.