[A] girl from the village: totally unspoilt
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158057 , vital:40144 , ISBN 9781498591775
- Description: The South Asian women’s diaspora engages in spatio-temporal interactions and power differentials in a variety of narratives, articulating agency, multiplicities of belonging and culturally integrative practices, highlighting homing paradigms. The sense of alienness in a new homeland, rather in worldwide home places, triggers rethinking of diasporic conceptions and epistemes of individual and group histories, personal and collective experiences. Some of the questions that this anthology seeks to consider are: How do women from the South Asian diaspora represent cultural negotiations and alienness of the adopted homeland in various narratives? What are the themes/issues they select to portray their perceptions of foreignness? How do culture, history and politics intervene in their portrayal of lived experiences? How do they locate themselves in the matrix of foreignness and diaspora? The contributors to this anthology examine narratives depicting South Asian women, their complexly positioned voices, gesturing at the proliferating challenges and reflecting the grim realities of a globalized world.
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Transnational Crime in Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak and Santiago Gamboa’s Night Prayers:
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/163881 , vital:41077 , ISBN 9783030534134 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1007/978-3-030-53413-4_2
- Description: Naidu argues that transnational crime wreaks havoc on global, national and personal levels in the postcolonial crime novels Devil’s Peak (2007) by South African author Deon Meyer and Night Prayers (2016) by Colombian author Santiago Gamboa. As postcolonial crime novels, they critique sociopolitical instability and corruption harking back to colonial times. Using mobility studies, Naidu interrogates the novels’ rendering of complex relations between the local and the global, and the past and the present. Despite stylistic and generic differences, both novels engage with the pervasive, transnational nature of criminal syndicates and current crimes which are a result of turbulent and unjust histories. Naidu examines the mobility of hapless victims, postcolonial anti-detectives and subversive heroines and comments on the ironic hope afforded by such figures.
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‘That ever-blurry line between us and the criminals’: African Noir and the Ambiguity of Justice in MŨkoma wa NgŨgĨ’s Black Star Nairobi and Leye Adenle’s When Trouble Sleeps
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158069 , vital:40145 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1093/fmls/cqaa020
- Description: This article, which focuses on African noir as a variety of neo-noir literature, begins by outlining the intertextual and intercultural relationships between classic noir and African noir. Thereafter, the postcolonial, postmodernist and transnational elements of African noir are described utilizing Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ’s novel Black Star Nairobi (2013) and Leye Adenle’s When Trouble Sleeps (2018) as exemplars. Arguing that African noir draws on various genres and discourses, the article demonstrates how issues of socio-political justice, ontological and existential dilemmas, aesthetic concerns and the epistemological quest are rendered as ambiguous and murky. Based on a close reading of Black Star Nairobi and When Trouble Sleeps, the article concludes that the predominant chiaroscuro effect of African noir is not so much a ‘dark’ sensibility as one of abstruseness and poignant Afro-pessimism.
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In Search of the “Goodlife": Border Crossing and Agency in Luis Alberto Urrea's Into the Beautiful North and Graciela Limón's The River Flows North
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158046 , vital:40142 , https://doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2019.16474490
- Description: This article explores representations of complex diasporic subjectivities that resist, or attempt to resist, obsolete nationalist notions of citizenship and identity by crossing the US– Mexico border (and, in so doing, crossing other intangible borders) in search of a better life. Two examples of border literature, Luis Alberto Urrea's Into the Beautiful North (2009) and Graciela Limón's The River Flows North (2009), have been selected for analysis. These texts, in describing various diaspora spaces—to enlist Avtar Brah's term (Cartographies of Diaspora. London: Routledge, 1996)—also examine how those who do not migrate are affected by migration. In Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016), Priscilla Solis Ybarra reveals how the past century and a half's Mexican-American literature contains valuable new approaches to creating and sustaining new forms of transnational relations between humans, and ecologically sound relationships between humans and nature.
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Intersecting Diasporas:
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158034 , vital:40141 , DOI: 10.1080/18125441.2019.1661597
- Description: With increased mobility enabled by evolving technology, the world experiences higher rates of migration and globalisation than ever before. This phenomenon has led, in recent years, to a high volume of literature about migration and diaspora, i.e. literature which deals with the general theme of transnationalism. The term transnational, in its simplest guise, refers to the relations between citizens of different nation states and the networks which link them. It also refers to the complex subjectivity of those who migrate. Scholars emphasise that transnationalism, because of heterogeneity and diversity, gives rise to a site for dynamic social and cultural change. At the same time, continuity is a necessary feature of this site. The co-existence of change and continuity (a focused process of adaptation and assimilation which simultaneously considers the role of memory, the past, and ties to homeland) then is also a defining element of transnationalism.
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Teaching Postcolonial Crime Fiction:
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158013 , vital:40139 , ISBN 978-3-319-90608-9
- Description: This chapter is a survey of teaching crime fiction in postcolonial South Africa. After offering a definition and historicisation of postcolonial crime fiction in general, the survey focuses on my third-year undergraduate course, ‘Sleuthing the State: South African Crime and Detective Fiction’. The survey includes a description of the curriculum content, teaching methods, forms of assessment and student evaluation. The chapter also contains theoretical discussion about the practical and ethical implications of teaching crime fiction in a turbulent and transitional socio-political context. To end, the chapter comments on the high points of this teaching experience and on some of the challenges encountered.
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Teaching Postcolonial Crime Fiction:
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158024 , vital:40140 , ISBN 978-3-319-90608-9
- Description: This chapter is a survey of teaching crime fiction in postcolonial South Africa. After offering a definition and historicisation of postcolonial crime fiction in general, the survey focuses on my third-year undergraduate course, ‘Sleuthing the State: South African Crime and Detective Fiction’. The survey includes a description of the curriculum content, teaching methods, forms of assessment and student evaluation. The chapter also contains theoretical discussion about the practical and ethical implications of teaching crime fiction in a turbulent and transitional socio-political context. To end, the chapter comments on the high points of this teaching experience and on some of the challenges encountered.
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‘I don’t belong nowhere really’: the figure of the London migrant in Dan Jacobson’s ‘A Long Way from London’ and Jean Rhys’s ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha , Thorpe, Andrea
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68422 , vital:29254 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2018.1461477
- Description: Publisher version , In this article we compare and contrast the figure of the migrant, central to Dan Jacobson’s short story ‘A Long Way from London’ ([1953] 1958. A Long Way from London and other stories. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson), and to Jean Rhys’s short story ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’ ([1962] 1987. The Collected Stories. New York: Norton), both of which are set in London in the early to mid-twentieth century. The main argument is that these figures, as migrants in London from South Africa and the Caribbean respectively, similarly occupy a liminal space despite stark differences in class, race and gender. In both stories this liminal space is described through evocations of London as a hostile diasporic space, lacking in hospitality, and experienced by the migrant figure as a place of confinement and incarceration. Also, both stories utilize the technique of silence or lacunae when it comes to issues of specific discrimination and abuse, such as racism or sexual exploitation. For the purposes of comparison, the character Manwera from ‘A Long Way from London’ and, Selina, the protagonist of ‘Let Them Call It Jazz’, are selected for analysis. Particularly, their respective responses (Manwera’s pride and dignity, and Selina’s recovery after a breakdown, and her musical talent) to the exigencies of migration are suggestive of ‘adaptive strength’ (Steve Vertovec and Robin Cohen [1999] 2001. Migration, Diasporas and Transnationalism. Cheltenham and Northampton MA: Elgar Reference Collection, xviii), a common feature in transnational literature which attempts to celebrate liminality and multiplicity as key characteristics of a transnational subjectivity. In addition, the protagonist of ‘A Long Way from London’, Arthur, offers a contrast to Manwera and Selina, not only because of race and class, but because he is depicted as having adapted to and assimilated into British culture, while being strangely detached from and ambivalent about both homeland and diasporic home. Varying forms of adaptive strength are portrayed in both stories, but they close with intimations of bleak futures for the migrant figures. The essay thus concludes with the observation that in these two stories, the figure of the London migrant is rendered as facing further grave challenges, and that all three figures ‘belong nowhere’ (Rhys [1962] 1987 Rhys, Jean. [1962] 1987. The Collected Stories. New York: Norton. [Google Scholar] , 175).
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A survey of South African crime fiction : critical analysis and publishing history
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Book , text
- Identifier: vital:26344 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53878 , https://www.isbs.com/products/9781869143558 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: Is crime fiction the new 'political novel' in South Africa? Why did the apartheid censors disapprove of crime fiction more than any other genre? Crime fiction continues to be a burgeoning literary category in post-apartheid South Africa, with more new authors, titles and themes emerging every year. This book is the first comprehensive survey of South African crime fiction. It provides an overview of this phenomenally successful literary category, and places it within its wider social and historical context. The authors specialise in both literary studies and print culture, and this combination informs a critical analysis and publishing history of South African crime fiction from the nineteenth century to the present day. The book provides a literary lineage while considering different genres and sub-genres, as well as specific themes such as gender and eco-criticism. The inclusion of a detailed bibliography of crime fiction since the 1890s makes A Survey of South African Crime Fiction an indispensable teaching and study aid
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A “Horrific Breakdown of Reason": Holmes and the Postcolonial Anti-Detective Novel, Lost Ground
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/157980 , vital:40136 , ISBN 978-1-137-55595-3
- Description: Using the notion of “negative hermeneutics,” this chapter examines how Michiel Heyns’s novel Lost Ground draws on the heritage of the Sherlock Holmes stories. It argues that Heyns’s representation of contemporary South Africa necessitates a shift from the emphasis on the epistemological quests of nineteenth-century detective fiction to the “negative hermeneutics” and ontological concerns of postcolonial anti-detective fiction. An analysis of Lost Ground reveals direct intertextual and metatextual references to “The Silver Blaze,” yet the novel subversively presents a detective figure that is the antithesis of Holmes. Thus the chapter demonstrates how in postcolonial social and cultural contexts the ratiocinative process is hermeneutically inadequate and socio-political analysis comes to replace, or combine with, the feats of reason epitomized by Holmes.
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Book Review: Losing the Plot. Crime, reality and fiction in postapartheid writing
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124942 , vital:35712 , https://dx.doi.org/10.17159/tvl.v.54i2.2980
- Description: In this wide-ranging and impressive ac¬count of postapartheid writing, De Kock describes the “dizzingly heterogeneous corpus” (1) of South African literature after apartheid with the aim of describing its distinctive features and complexity. The methodology is straightforward. De Kock has chosen to read particular liter¬ary works in order to identify broader ideas and trends. To contextualise the study, De Kock deploys the key, perva¬sive notion of “transition”. The notion is variously defined as a “transformative shift from one ‘state’ to another” (2), a “popular mythology” in the “collective consciousness” (3), and as containing a counter-discourse of disillusionment or disorientation, which De Kock refers to as “‘plot loss’” (3). This “plot loss” becomes a central trope in the book to express the social and political chaos of the country, evident in various criminal manifestations of neo-colonialism such as neo-liberal economic policies, new forms of racism, and corruption.
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Evil and the Hero-Villain Binary in Deon Meyer’s Post-Apartheid Crime Thriller, Devil’s Peak:
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha , Van der Wielen, Karlien
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/157991 , vital:40137 , ISBN 9781498533423
- Description: The Functions of Evil Across Disciplinary Contexts explores answers to two important questions about the age-old theme of evil: is there any use in using the concept of evil in cultural, psychological, or other secular evaluations of the world and its productions? Most importantly, if there is, what might these functions be? By looking across several disciplines and analyzing evil as it is referenced across a broad spectrum of phenomena, this work demonstrates the varying ways that we interact with the ethical dilemma as academics, as citizens, and as people. The work draws from authors in different fields—including history, literary and film studies, philosophy, and psychology—and from around the world to provide an analysis of evil in such topics as deeply canonical as Beowulf and Shakespeare to subjects as culturally resonant as Stephen King, Captain America, or the War on Terror. By bringing together this otherwise disparate collection of scholarship, this collection reveals that discussions of evil across disciplines have always been questions of how cultures represent that which they find socially abhorrent. This work thus opens the conversation about evil outside of field-specific limitations, simultaneously demonstrating the assumptions that undergird the manner by which such a conversation proceeds.
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Sherlock Holmes in context
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Book
- Identifier: vital:26345 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53888 , http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137555946 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: This book of interdisciplinary essays serves to situate the original Sherlock Holmes, and his various adaptations, in a contemporary cultural context. This collection is prompted by three main and related questions: firstly, why is Sherlock Holmes such an enduring and ubiquitous cultural icon; secondly, why is it that Sherlock Holmes, nearly 130 years after his birth, is enjoying such a spectacular renaissance; and, thirdly, what sort of communities, imagined or otherwise, have arisen around this figure since the most recent resurrections of Sherlock Holmes by popular media? Covering various media and genres (TV, film, literature, theatre) and scholarly approaches, this comprehensive collection offers cogent answers to these questions
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Crime travel: a survey of representations of transnational crime in South African crime fiction
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:26347 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53900 , http://jcpcsonline.com/ , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: The literatures, the histories, the politics, and the arts whose focus, locales, or subjects involve Britain and other European countries and their former colonies, the now decolonized, independent nations in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, and also Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.
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The emergence of the South African farm crime novel : socio-historical crimes, personal crimes, and the figure of the dog
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:26325 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53776 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/eia/article/view/142930 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: Crime fiction is an established and popular literary genre in South Africa that has gained international recognition and acclaim. The genre continues to expand and develop in terms of thematic concerns and experiments in form. One such notable development is the farm crime novel, which extends the tradition of the South African plaasroman. Recent texts, such as Elaine Proctor’s The Savage Hour and Karin Brynard’s Weeping Waters, quite deliberately set their respective murder mysteries on remote farms, and both novels particularise details of farm life. This article argues that the main concerns of the farm crime novel are, on one level, socio-historical – that is, the crimes perpetrated are the result of relationships to the land, land claims and land re-distribution, and the complex, evolving relationship between landowner and labourer. On another level, true to the conventions of crime fiction, the farm crime novel also explores interpersonal or intimate relationships that result in crimes of passion. Of particular interest is the observation that common to both thematic levels is a profound rendering of the link between human-animal relations and human-human relations. Drawing on Karla Armbruster’s work on the cultural significance of narratives about dogs and the need for more just and ethical relationships with animals, the article then demonstrates how this rendering occurs, often, through the figure of the dog. To conclude, some comments are offered on the position of the farm crime novel in a post-apartheid literary landscape
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South African crime fiction: sleuthing the State post-1994, African Identities
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53912 , vital:26357 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2015.1009621 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: In this essay we demonstrate how the burgeoning field of South African crime fiction has responded to the birth and development of a democratic, post-apartheid South African state. First, an overview of South African crime fiction in the last 20 years is presented. Then the essay presents an argument for South African crime fiction to be regarded as the ‘new political novel’, based on its capacity for socio-political analysis. We use Deon Meyer, arguably South Africa’s most popular and successful crime fiction author, as an exemplar for our argument. In the following section, the genresnob debate and the resurgence of such terms as ‘lowbrow’ and ‘highbrow’ are considered in relation to crime fiction and the role it plays in the socio-cultural arena of post-apartheid South Africa. We conclude with a comment on the significance of popular literary genres for democracy and critical discourses which underpin that democracy. The essay shows that crime fiction is a strong tool for socio-political analysis in a democratic South Africa, because it promotes critical discourse in society, despite being deemed lowbrow or ideologically ambiguous.
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The first world’s third world expert: self-exoticization in Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:26358 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53922 , http://jcpcsonline.com/contents/ns-v03n1.html , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: A literary criticism of the book "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini is presented. It outlines the characters and explores the symbolic significance of these characters. It explores the aspects of contemporary literature among neo-Orientalist representations of the Middle East and the Muslim world. It notes on the contribution of the Euro-American intervention in military and cultural identities of Middle East Orientalists. An overview of the story is also given.
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Crimes against nature : ecocritical discourse in South African crime fiction
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:26322 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53754 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2014.950599 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: Heeding Patrick Murphy's call to critics, in his book, Ecocritical explorations in literary and cultural studies: fences, boundaries and field, to study “nature-oriented mystery novels … in order to understand the degree to which environmental consciousness and nature awareness has permeated popular and commercial fiction” (2009: 143), this article examines how highly successful author, Deon Meyer, has employed crime fiction to popularize ecological issues and debates in South Africa. In this article, Meyer's first “nature-oriented” novel, the crime thriller, Blood safari (2009), is analysed. The main question asked is whether South African crime fiction deploys ecocritical discourse for mercenary reasons or whether its engagement with environmental issues constitutes a bona fide sub-category of ecocritical literature. The same rationale – understanding how “environmental consciousness and nature awareness” manifest in one of the most popular and commercially viable genres of fiction in South Africa today – informs the broader study from which this article is drawn. Some of the findings of this study, which includes a reading of Meyer's second “nature-oriented” novel, Trackers (2011), Jane Taylor's Of wild dogs, Margaret von Klemperer's Just a dead man, and Ingrid Winterbach's literary detective novel, The book of happenstance, are referred to briefly. To conclude, the contribution of “nature-oriented” crime fiction to a “localised ecocriticism” is assessed
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The struggle for authority in George McCall Theal's Kaffir Folklore
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:26362 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53942 , https://www.upjournals.co.za/index.php/SAJFS/article/view/1674 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: This article focuses specifically on George McCall Theal’s collection of folktale texts, Kaffir Folklore (1882), as an example of an early South African ethnographic publication, and argues that the folktale transcriptions contained therein, although a part of Theal’s general colonialist project, are hybrid, containing the voices of both coloniser and colonised. The key argument is that the presence of the African voices in this text reveals simultaneously that Theal’s editorial aspirations were never absolutely imposed, and that agency and influence (albeit limited) of the colonised Xhosa co-authors were present. The article offers an analysis of the paratext (the preface, the introduction and the explanatory notes) of Kaffir Folkore, rather than a close reading of the tales themselves. To facilitate an understanding of Theal’s editorial practice, Kaffir Folkore is compared to Harold Scheub’s The Xhosa Ntsomi (1975). More generally, drawing on postcolonial folklore and book-history scholarship, the article explores how folklore texts of the colonial era, although contributing to the establishment of a literary and cultural orthodoxy in modern South Africa, constitute a telling hybrid genre, which invites a re-evaluation of colonial relations, and of individual texts themselves. In short, these texts synthesise different literary traditions (European and African), different mediums (the oral and the written), different disciplinary approaches (ethnography, folklore, literature), and most significantly, the voices of different subjects. Kaffir Folklore (1882) epitomises this synthesis
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Writing the violated body : representations of violence against women in Margie Orford’s crime thriller novels
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: Article , text
- Identifier: vital:26361 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/53932 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18125441.2014.904396 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9456-8657
- Description: Using the late twentieth-century French feminist notions of écriture féminine and the abject as a starting point, this article considers the various pitfalls, effects and ethical ramifications of representations of violence against the female body in South African crime fiction. How do authors reconcile the entertainment value of such representations with their aims to perform social analysis? This article attempts to answer this question by first describing how violence targeted at the female body is graphically portrayed, and, second, by assessing the effects of these visceral descriptions. Margie Orford’s novels, in particular, the first in the Clare Hart series, Like clockwork (2006), which foregrounds human trafficking, prostitution and gender-based violence, will be examined. In Orford’s Clare Hart series, the female detective figure, the various plots to do with assault, abduction, rape and murder, and the explicit imagery that descriptively conveys such crimes, are narrative techniques employed by Orford to address this scourge, and the patriarchy and sexism of contemporary South African society in general. The article ends by assessing whether a bona fide feminist subgenre of South African crime fiction is being inscribed by Orford
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