The heterogeneity of South African society makes it difficult to do justice to the range and variety of expression present in the country’s literary history. A significant part of the criticism leveled at the existing literary historiography has come from scholars who felt that English-speaking critics had misrepresented or undervalued authors and issues in their fields. A solution to this problem is to include representatives from all those fields in a multi-authored, collaborative project. Derek Attridge and David Attwell’s Cambridge History of South African Literature sets out in this vein to be “the most fully representative collection of historical scholarship on the country’s extensive literary production yet to have been published” (12). It includes discussion of oral and written literature in all of South Africa’s official languages, though the weight of the discussion falls heavily on production in English and Afrikaans. Representativity in this context also means historical coverage: the volume is structured along broadly chronological lines from prehistory to the present, with the focus falling, understandably enough, on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Perhaps most importantly, it also means coverage of the major themes, genres, movements, and moments in the history.

The factors that make writing a history like this such a precarious exercise are also, as the excellent introduction to this volume makes clear, the factors that make South African literature so critically fascinating. Drawing on work by Andries Oliphant, Attwell and Attridge briefly discuss the three main options for South African literary historiography: the bilingual (the oldest mode, covering work in just the settler languages); the monolingual (as in the work on isiXhosa literature by A.C. Jordan, or on Afrikaans literature by J. C. Kannemeyer; or on English-language writing by Malvern van Wyk Smith); and the multilingual (as in work by Albert Gérard and Michael Chapman, for example). In defending their decision to opt for the last of these, Attwell and Attridge argue for a mode in which “the theoretical complexity of the field is deferred to history itself: South African modernity has always produced centrifugal forces which have undermined separatism” (10). Pointing toward a “unifying history” underpinned by an aggressive racial capitalism, along with various examples of translingual influence (especially in relation to genre), translation, and translingual writing (writing done by authors in more than one language), the introduction makes a compelling case for the existence of a literary field that can accurately be called South African literature.

The work is divided into sections bookended by key dates in the country’s history: 1488, 1820, 1910, and 1948. This rather predictable chronology is enlivened in two ways. Chapters within each section are organized by theme, and the final section of the volume reflects explicitly on “continuities” and “contrasts” within the history. Inevitably, some chapters are more successful than others. By definition, the kind of writing in volumes like this tends toward the summative, is consolidatory in intention, retrospective in its gaze, and strives toward clarity and conciseness. Writers are advised to shun the polemical and the combative. Individual chapters are structured around big ideas, but at the same time are expected to contribute toward the overall historical trajectory. It is difficult to keep all of these different requirements in play across of a project of this size. At worst, this cocktail of imperatives can result in plodding periodizing, work by work summaries, a predilection for the list, and an excessive bibliographic focus. At its best, it generates a fluent, fascinating, and immensely productive consolidation of insights and ideas. Fortunately, the vast majority of the essays in this volume fall into the latter category.

Following closely on Ato Quayson’s two-volume Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, the Cambridge History of South African Literature confirms a belated but welcome move on Cambridge University Press’s part to increase its investment in postcolonial literatures. The histories have long been a central part of the press’s academic publishing strategy, but postcolonial literatures have not loomed large in its prospectus. Where American literature, for example, was afforded nine volumes of space (including one on American women’s writing), Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi were given just two volumes to cover the history of African and Caribbean literatures, strangely conjoined as if neither were substantial enough on its own. Attridge and Attwell’s volume runs to 835 pages, touching the edge of what is acceptable for a project of this ambition; what they amply demonstrate, though, is the extent to which the convoluted history of South African literature rewards the kind of scrutiny invited by this genre of scholarship. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in South African letters.