“Silenced Generation”: South African Emigrant Writers and Their Fates (1950–1960s)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of emigration of writers from South Africa in the 1950s–1960s. Using the example of the fates of three South African writers – Peter Abrahams, Nat Nakasa and Arthur Nortier – the author raises the following questions: what were the reasons that forced the creative intelligentsia to leave their country? What was the state policy towards emigrants in the 1950s and 1960s? Why did emigration become an opportunity for some writers to gain political and creative freedom, while for others it became a path to self-destruction, loneliness and death? The problem of emigration and emigrant literature of South Africa is almost unexplored both in South Africa and in foreign historiography. However, the study of the fate of South African emigration sheds light on similar processes and problems in the history of other countries: the causes of emigration of intellectuals, the relations between writers and authorities, the problem of self-identification of representatives of various diasporas abroad, as well as the problem of intercultural and interracial dialogue both in literature and everyday life.