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- Title
Beyond Gold and Diamonds: Genre, the Authorial Informant, and the British South African Novel.
- Authors
Mukherjee, Upamanyu Pablo
- Abstract
Melissa Free's book, "Beyond Gold and Diamonds: Genre, the Authorial Informant, and the British South African Novel," explores the paradox of how literary and cultural innovations often arise from regions considered to be less developed. Free examines popular genres such as New Woman fiction, colonial frontier romance, and the anglophone spy novel, focusing on writers like Olive Schreiner, Henry Rider Haggard, Gertrude Page, and John Buchan. She argues that these authors, who were British settlers in southern Africa, were able to experiment with and extend generic boundaries due to a specific narrative position she calls the "authorial informant." While Free acknowledges the importance of South Africa's mineral industry and the brutality imposed on Indigenous people, she primarily emphasizes the political events of the time, such as wars and the union of South Africa, as drivers of literary experiments. However, the analysis could benefit from considering the impact of colonial South Africa's mineral revolution on its literature and politics.
- Subjects
SOUTH Africans; DIAMONDS; GOLD; POSTCOLONIAL literature; COLONIES; DIAMOND jewelry; SPY stories
- Publication
Victorian Studies, 2023, Vol 65, Issue 4, p715
- ISSN
0042-5222
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2979/vic.00081