Abstract
In light of the scattered nature of criticism regarding the work of South African author, Mike Nicol, this article surveys the transformation of Nicol’s novelistic style so as to better lluminate the representation and deployment of history in his third novel, Horseman (1994). South Africa’s political transformation not only offers a context for understanding the novel, but also provokes questions for the South African writer: how does the writer respond to the oppression of apartheid and the possibility of a new dispensation given the memory of such oppression? What forms best articulate that response? In the case of Horseman, how does one read the book’s pessimism against the backdrop of the first democratic elections? A consideration of Nicol’s greater body of work–his realist and more allegorical modes–points to a complicated relationship between the South African writer and the period of transition leading up to the 1994 elections.
Highlights
Mike Nicol occupies an interesting position in recent South African writing; a prolific journalist, a biographer, a poet and a novelist, he appears adept at writing in a variety of literary forms
Nicol’s novels can be divided into two quite distinct phases: a first phase that includes The Powers that Be (1989), This Day and Age (1992) Horseman, and The Ibis Tapestry (1998) and a second phase that has produced three novels so far, Out to Score (2006, with Joanne Hichens), Payback (2008), and Killer Country (2010) The obvious distinction between these two phases lies in genre inasmuch as the
Chait overemphasizes the importance of a particular reading of Horseman, and so overlooks the book’s geographical and historical signifiers that indicate its engagement with literary forms; its bitter critique of colonialism; its engagement with the discourse of colonial writing; the constant struggle to represent South African landscape;10 and the consequence of enforcing language and culture onto a pre-existing land
Summary
Mike Nicol occupies an interesting position in recent South African writing; a prolific journalist, a biographer, a poet and a novelist, he appears adept at writing in a variety of literary forms.
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