In declining our invitation to contribute an article to this volume, Breyten Breytenbach wished us well but pointed out the impossibility of our task. How can we begin to assess the issues raised by literature written in South Africa from 1970 to 1995, considering our closeness to the event?

Produced during a period of intense political struggle, the literature of the period offers an opportunity to examine a set of complex questions whose importance goes well beyond the boundaries of a single country. Does literature have a distinctive role to play in political life? What is the writer's responsibility in a situation of political crisis? How does the writer's concern with form and language relate to the demands of ethics and politics? How are ethical priorities changing in relation to political developments, and how are these changes suggested or reflected in cultural practices? How do issues of class and gender interact with those of race in an environment that is marked by rapid political shifts?

Such issues inform a further set of questions about the specificity of South African literary traditions. How do these traditions draw on or set themselves against literary developments in the rest of Africa, and in Europe and the Americas? How useful are the terms ‘modernism’, ‘post modernism,’ ‘postcolonialism’, in the description of South African literatures?