The Interpreters: South Africa’s New Nonfiction

The Interpreters is a collection of some of the absolute best South African literary nonfiction published since the end of apartheid. Its editors have done an amazing job of making this book as varied, odd and crazy as South Africa itself, all tied together by an ineffable thread of lived realities. The book’s small independent publisher, Soutie Press, lists the range of subjects as “from the underworld of zama-zama gold miners to the tragicomic closure of a Cape Town Zoo, from stick fighting to punk rock, game lodges to fruit farms, cricket pitches to mermaids”, and that just scrapes the surface. Every reader will find their own entry point from which they can chart their particular understanding of the country’s meaning, and then branch off from there into a dizzying array of perspectives. It’s a book to savour, and one that will have you marvelling at the talented writers who have worked to chart South Africa’s uneasy and ongoing gestation, and point toward what we might become.