6. “Finding new sites: transformations of place and identity in the post-apartheid fiction of Nadine Gordimer and Zakes Mda”

The centrality of location in post-apartheid fiction is a crucial point which
gives birth to interesting considerations on social and individual life. The
introduction of innovative viewpoints in narrative is often rendered
through a different perception of space, as well as through the presence of
additional spatial dimensions intended as symbolic accounts of inner
evolutions. The following paper deals with an analysis of real and
imaginary spaces in two post-apartheid novels, The Madonna of Excelsior
by Zakes Mda and The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer. The presence of
“real” and “imaginary” sites in the two narratives fosters the function of
location as a means of building one’s own new personality. Therefore, the
perception of space in these novels becomes a fundamental element in the
construction of new post-apartheid identities.