A detailed and compelling volume that contributes significantly to current trends in post-apartheid scholarship.

The Karoo is a vast semi-desert region that extends across parts of the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This environmentally important area is the largest ecosystem in the country and is abundant in wildlife, vegetation, and ancient history. The Plains of Camdeboo is a celebration of this remarkable landscape. At first encounter the Karoo may seem arid, desolate and unforgiving, but to those who know it, it is a land of secret beauty and infinite variety. For generations author Eve Palmer's family have lived on the Karoo farm of Cranemere, situated on the Plains of Camdeboo. This family have battled for decades against this harsh desert; they have had to adapt to it, learning to fear, respect, and ultimately love it. First published in 1966, The Plains of Camdeboo has become a classic in South African literature. Here is a book that is not autobiography, not history, not botanical study, but all of these and more, blending into a uniquely vivid and personal account of life in the Karoo. The animals, the insects, the wealth of fossils, the countless flowers that spring miraculously to life after rain - all are woven into this rich and engaging story.

Simple Forms is a study of popular or folk literature in the medieval period. Focusing both on the vast body of oral literature that lies behind the written texts which have survived from the medieval period and on the popular literature provided by literate authors for audiences of hearers or readers with varying degrees of literacy, Douglas Gray leads new readers to a productively complicated understanding of the relationship between medieval popular culture and the culture of the learned. He argues that medieval society was stratified, in what seems to us a rigid way, but that culturally it was more flexible. Literary topics, themes, and forms moved; there was much borrowing, and a constant interaction. Popular tales, motifs, and ideas passed into learned or courtly works; learned forms and attitudes made their way in into popular culture. All in all this seems to have been a fruitful symbiosis. The book's twelve chapters are principally organised genre, covering epics, ballads, popular romances, folktales, the German sage, legends, animal tales and fables, proverbs, riddles, satires, songs, and drama.

In Resistance: Sol Plaatje and South Africa, Shane Moran studies Sol Plaatje, the founding secretary of what was to become the African National Congress (ANC), and his work within the context of colonial politics and resistance. Arguing for a return to the study of one of the founders of anti-racism, Moran explores issues of land reform, human rights, and the legacy of colonialism. Through an in-depth analysis of Plaatje’s resistance to racial domination, Moran examines the nature of the struggles that continue within and beyond South Africa today. In particular, Moran analyzes events from the beginning of the previous century that shaped post-1994 South Africa, such as the resolution of the ANC to expropriate land without compensation.