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.