In Storyscapes we listen carefully to what South African writers reveal about themselves and
their relations to South African space since the democratic transition of 1994. One main focus
is the power of stories to uncover contradictory processes and investments of identity and to
point readers toward a more meaningful life. Another main focus is the complexities of the
post-colonial understanding of South African land landscape and space. Space in relation to
race class and gender identity figures prominently in analyses and comparisons of diverse
South African texts such as Breyten Breytenbach's Dog Heart André Brink's Imaginings of Sand
as well as the important South African subgenre of the farm novel. Questions of black or hybrid
identity are highlighted by confronting older texts with new ones by black and women writers
such as A.H.M. Scholtz and E.K.M. Dido. These texts - and a number of Afrikaans texts that are
less well-known in the English-speaking world - are set in the wider frameworks of postcolonial
criticism and global issues of cultural identity.
