Stephane Serge Ibinga

Representation of Women in Post-apartheid Novels: Critical Reading on the Portrayal of Women in Post-1994 Literary Texts Stephane Serge Ibinga

The book focuses on literary representation of female characters in selected novels by three particular South African writers working within the transitional phase of South African history. By means of textual analysis, the study investigates how the representation of numerous female characters in these texts reflects on and reflects the sector of South African society that forms the social setting of each text. Ibinga explores the portrayal of female characters in selected fictional works by examining the ways in which the novelists Mandla Langa, Zakes Mda (both of them black and male writers) and Nadine Gordimer (a white and female novelist) characterise women in novels depicting this adapting society. In scrutinising these texts of the transition period, the critic employs detailed individual delineation of female characters, to some extent by means of a comparative approach, with emphasis on parallels between as well as differences among the abovementioned authors? ways of describing South African women?s circumstances and responses to their social predicaments.