Page 14 - University of Pretoria RESEARCH REVIEW 2018

A history of intricate connections David Medalie, Department of English
The lives of South Africans have always been interwoven in complex ways. There is a long history of division; but also of profound (and often surprising) instances of mutual recognition.
Recognition is an anthology of short stories in which twenty-two South African writers render these intricate connections of recognition and misrecognition. The writers whose stories have been selected use the transformative power of the imagination and the unique appeal of the short story to illuminate aspects of our past and present. Cumulatively their stories tell of a history tainted by misrecognition but not, finally, bound by it.
David Medalie, editor of the anthology, is the Director of the Unit for Creative Writing, and Professor in the Department of English at UP. He is a short story writer, novelist and anthologist whose own writing and publications have won or been shortlisted for awards in recent months.
Recognition, published by Wits University Press, includes an introduction written by Professor Medalie. It traces the motif of recognition, discusses the general characteristics of short stories (a genre in which South Africa writers have excelled) and the narrative devices used by writers, and offers a brief analysis of each short story. The anthology has just been reprinted
for the third time and has been prescribed at a number of schools and universities, including the University of Pretoria. It has also won a prestigious award in March 2019 from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, as the winner in the category of Best Fiction Edited Volume.
Among the twenty-two contributors are some of South Africa’s best- known short story writers: Pauline Smith, Herman Charles Bosman,
HIE Dhlomo, Can Themba, Nadine Gordimer, Alex La Guma, Dan Jacobson, Miriam Tlali, Ahmed Essop,
Njabulo Ndebele, Mandla Langa, Chris van Wyk, Damon Galgut, Achmat Dangor and Zoë Wicomb. And there is also a selection of vibrant newer voices: Makhosazana Xaba, Nadia Davids, Mary Watson, Lindiwe Nkutha, Wamuwi Mbao and Kobus Moolman. Chronologically, the collection ranges from the 1920s to the 21st century.
A short story by Professor Medalie, Borrowed by the Wind, was shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Award and subsequently published in 2018 by Jacana Media in the second anthology derived from the award, entitled As You Like It: African Perspectives on Gender, Social Justice and Sexuality. The events in Medalie’s story span two time periods, the first part being set during the apartheid years and the second taking place during the post-apartheid period. The story explores a number of issues, including sexual identity, masculinity, violence and the manipulation of the past for expedient reasons.
Professor Medalie has published
a novel, The Shadow Follows, and
two collections of short stories, The Shooting of the Christmas Cows and The Mistress’s Dog. The title story of the latter collection won the Thomas Pringle Award in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Caine Prize, the pre-eminent award for African writing, in 2011.
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