World Literature, the Print Medium, and the Writing of Postcolonial Literary History

Transnationalism, as understood in this book, is a condition, a predicament of literature in southern Africa, not a programme or an ideology. It is a predicament brought about by the cultural, economic, and political impact of late colonialism and by the migratory potential of the print medium. Literacy spreads unevenly. Writers are forced into exile. Envelopes travel. Books, letters, and journals move from one end of town to another, from one continent to another, and make it possible-at best-to think the world anew.