Description:
A new edition of the post-apartheid literary classic by one of South Africa's greatest writers, with a new foreword by National Book Award winner Rabih Alameddine.
South Africa, 1991--The apartheid regime has fallen, and in its wake David Dirkse, a member of the militant wing of the anti-apartheid African National Congress, is dictating the story of his life to an unnamed narrator. But hidden amid David's recollections of his work in the struggle, and his historical exploration of South Africa's Griqua people, is a more sinister narrative. What is haunting David, and who is Dulcie, the fellow comrade who he denies any romantic connection to?
Toni Morrison called Zoë Wicomb "an extraordinary writer," and J. M. Coetzee has called David's Story "a tremendous achievement." Mesmerizing and multilayered, Wicomb's award-winning novel delivers a moving examination of the nature of political vision, memory, and truth.
Review Quotes:
Praise for David's Story
"A kaleidoscopic book." --The New York Times
"For years we have been waiting to see what the literature of post-apartheid South Africa will look like. Now Zoë Wicomb delivers the goods. Witty in tone, sophisticated in technique, eclectic in language, beholden to no one in its politics, David's Story is a tremendous achievement and a huge step in the remaking of the South African novel." --J. M. Coetzee, author of Disgrace
"A delicate, powerful novel, guided by the paradoxes of witnessing the certainties of national liberation and the uncertainties of ground-level hybrid identity, the mysteries of sexual exchange, the austerity of political fiction. Wicomb's book belongs on a shelf with books by Maryse Condé and Yvette Christiansë." --Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
"Still fresh as paint and burningly urgent, Zoë Wicomb's multilayered novel David's Story reads as though it was written for today's reader. Wicomb's decentering of masculinity and nuanced portrayal of female perspectives rescues the story of the liberation struggle from its hypermasculine focus. The spear is replaced with a swirlkous." --Fiona Snyckers, author of Lacuna
Praise for Zoë Wicomb
"An extraordinary writer." --Toni Morrison