The crime novel in post-apartheid South Africa: a preliminary investigation

Abstract

We offer a broad introduction to the burgeoning field generally described as “crime fiction” or “crime writing”, a sub-genre whose rapid growth and continuing diversification are two of the defining features of post-apartheid literature in South Africa. We raise the issue of sociopolitical content in crime writing, and speculate on possible ways of looking at such discursive and formal engagement, especially in view of the accentuated political nature of South African writing during apartheid. We raise various methodological and theoretical issues in relation to the study of crime fiction, and offer a general survey of the main figures, both creative and critical, working this field in current and recent South African literary industry. The concepts of normalisation, as well as a newly developed theory of fictional “adequation”, partly based on the work of Lukács in his Theory of the Novel, are offered as possible key concepts, along with the notion that the post-apartheid state no longer has a monopoly over legitimate means of violence, creating ambiguous late-capitalist outlaw figures that are emblematic of the “occulted”, barely legible new order.