Publishing Reporter South African writers have long been masters at balancing the political and the personal in their narratives. This was acutely evident during the racially segregated apartheid era, which produced such celebrated literary giants as J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and Breyten Breytenbach, as well as the great dramatist Athol Fugard. But the necessity of setting individual concerns against a larger societal backdrop hasn't entirely lost currency in the 14 years since the collapse of white rule. "Up until 1994, there was something offensive about a South African story that simply bypassed politics," says novelist Damon Galgut from his apartment in Cape Town. "In theory, that's not the case anymore. We're free to write about absolutely anything. "But in practise it's not so simple, just because this is a very...
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