Experiments with Truth: Narrative Non-Fiction and the Coming of Democracy in South Africa, by Hedley Twidle

Abstract

One of the latest instalments in the African Articulations series from James Currey, Hedley Twidle’s Experiments with Truth is a compelling exploration of documentary practice in post-apartheid South Africa. This book is a seminal work on the genre of life writing, or non-fiction writing that adds critical and theoretical perspectives on engaging with contemporary South African literature. Questions of re-presentation, memory and memorialisation, and ways to theorise literary non-fiction are at the core of the discussion in this work. The carefully selected case studies from biography, literary journalism and reportage, oral history, emerging autobiographical reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation narrative, as well as political and personal testimonies provide a fresh lens on how to work with phenomenological forms of archiving history within a context that is itself in a process of self-reflection and socio-political transition. The work is a courteous gesture to a phenomenological appreciation of “truth” as reflected in contemporary narrative non-fiction from South Africa.