Books: Beyond borders
Local authors are using foreign landscapes to explore perennial human issues
There’s a literary Great Trek of sorts taking place. A bevy of local writers have abandoned the familiar SA backdrop, metaphorically leaving home to colonise imaginary hinterlands abroad — the US, in the case of both these novels. There is at least one obvious advantage to this literary migration. The new destinations are likely to prove to be financial El Dorados, for the SA novel-buying populace is small, whereas the transatlantic one is enormous. South, by Frank Owen — the joint pseudonym of writing team Diane Awerbuck and Alex Latimer — is a post-apocalyptic novel set in the eponymous lower swathe of America, following a civil war between it and the North. For Wilson, who is Zimbabwean-born but has lived in SA for many years, the matter of setting is simple: "I just don’t feel confident of authentically conveying an SA voice. I felt much more confident writing a version of America, because we are all living somewhere or another in the American empire. "I also appreciate that [wr...
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