The Sound of South Africa: Johan Vlok Louw’s Karoo Dusk

Abstract

This article examines the choices some South African authors have recently made as regards the setting and style of their writing, and the implications of these choices. It looks in some detail at Johan Vlok Louw’s Karoo Dusk (2014), and concludes with a brief look at Steven Boykey Sidley’s latest novel, Free Association (2017). The article was written with the current calls for decolonising the university curriculum in mind. It speculates about what a decolonised South African literature would be like and whether or not this is even possible. It argues that the global marketplace and increasingly borderless nature of modern culture are likely to be forces that the decolonisers will be unable to resist.

Keywords: Johan Vlok Louw, Karoo Dusk, Steven Boykey Sidley, Free Association, Lauren Beukes, Zakes Mda, decolonisation, language and literature, Karoo