Storytelling and social commentary in a comparison of Zakes Mda's Ways of Dying (1995) and Black Diamond (2009)

• Main Author: Thackwray, Sarah
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University 2017
• Subjects: South African literature (English) > Black authors > History and criticism; Politics in literature; Storytelling > South Africa
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/7149

In a comparison of two novels, Ways of Dying (1995) and Black Diamond (2009), this dissertation examines Zakes Mda's ongoing use of fiction in presenting incisive social commentary in the post-apartheid literary context. Mda's debut novel is a complex magic realist tale of Toloki, the professional mourner, who journeys from the village to the urban township. It is markedly different from his post-millennial satire, which invokes the social realist form, constructing a rapidly unfolding plot of urban gangsters, crime and sex, in which the characters are more representational than well-developed. While Ways of Dying has been praised as Mda's thought-provoking novel of the transition, Black Diamond has sometimes been criticised as being less able to comment significantly on the state of post-millennial South Africa. Subsequently, this dissertation evaluates the potential of Mda's most recent fictional portrayal of post-apartheid society to provide a meaningful interpretation of and commentary on post-apartheid South Africa, alongside his earlier novel.