ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a series of reflections on the field called South African literature, or sometimes just SA Lit., from the perspective of 2020. It offers a narrative sometimes peopled by the characters who gave shape to the field. More specialised and academic forms of writing need to appear more knowing from the outset: it is harder for them to admit the moment of encounter, of reading or seeing or listening to something for the first time. Also, the scholarly mode tends to imply that the authors discover things in the right order, in a linear fashion that implies a logic of steady intellectual growth and development, of one thing leading to another.
