The Invention of Mourning in Post-Apartheid Literature.

One of the chief challenges facing post-apartheid writers has been the need to produce literature capable of working through the losses of the apartheid era. While the resistance struggle instrumentalised literary production and politicised funerals, the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided a forum for the expression of personal loss but also tended to subsume individual testimonies within hegemonic national narratives. With particular reference to work by Zakes Mda, John Kani, JM Coetzee and Ingrid de Kok, this paper argues that postapartheid literature invents new forms of both mourning and community, offering alternative times and spaces for the expression of grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]