Witches & villains: the nasty tales
- Authors: Dalldorf, Tamaryn
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) -- 21st century , Fairy tales -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63087 , vital:28362
- Description: My thesis compromises a variety of short stories which are modern re-writes of dark fairy tales. Fairy Tales often explore the dark side of human nature and in these stories I focus on the voices of female villains and the strange psychology which drives them. I find Fairy Tales absorbing because they reveal the vulnerabilities, dreams and fears of the human consciousness. My stories contain some satirical expositions of human nature and society. My influences are the anthology of short stories, “My mother She Killed Me and My Father He Ate Me”, The Grimm Fairy Tales (original) and The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault as well as the writing of Horacio Moya, Angela Carter and Alissa Nutting for their dark satire and mockery of social eccentricities. Kate Bernheimer’s “Form is Fairy Tale and Fairy Tale is Form” is very influential in terms of the style it recommends in writing such as: “every day magic”, “flatness” (a form of narration), abstraction and intuitive logic.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Whatever you say
- Authors: Campbell, Laura
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/140993 , vital:37935
- Description: This document consists of two (2) parts : Part A: Thesis (Creative Work) ; Part B: Portfolio
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- Date Issued: 2020
Walls and remembrance
- Authors: M-Afrika, Andile Ernest
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) , South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , English language -- Writing
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5973 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011940 , Creative writing (Higher education) , South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , English language -- Writing
- Description: This is a story of a quest that begins on a wall of history at a cemetery where Steve Biko was buried. The main character is the writer, who is partly the author, partly a fictionalised everyman. He is on a journey of self-discovery, while at the same time questioning contemporary South Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Touching Brýnstone
- Authors: Woudstra, Ruth
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) -- 21st century , South African poetry (English) -- 21st century , Creative writing (Higher education) , Diaries -- Authorship , English language -- Writing
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2504 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015032
- Description: Touching Brýnstone is the story of Beth, a young journalist who is troubled by misfortunes in her family and work circumstances. In a Pretoria library she is seduced by a book that consoles her and progressively becomes a fetish object. It sparks a journey to Japan, where she arrives to teach English. She is intent on meeting the author, whom she confounds with protagonist and book. This Bildungsroman is an exploration of the complex relationship between inner and outer self, and the struggle towards wholeness. Beth must find a way out of the obsession so that she can return to South Africa with an enriched insight into her shadow self.
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- Date Issued: 2012
Third crime unlucky
- Authors: Cartwright, Robert Oliver
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Creative writing (Higher education) , Creative writing -- Fiction
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5987 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015729
- Description: This is a contemporary mystery novel set in the Eastern Cape. A town’s airstrip, situated between the golf club and the military base, acts as host to the local flying club and an active skydiving school. An amateur investigator uses unorthodox methods and the help of friends to find the cause of aeroplane fires and sabotage. His investigations lead him via geological research and insurance reports into contact with members of the aviation, property development and military fields.
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- Date Issued: 2012
Thintitha, Celiwe
- Authors: Masombuka, Thobekile Hlobisile
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147470 , vital:38639
- Description: This document consists of two (2) parts: Part A: Thesis (Creative Work) Part B: Portfolio
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- Date Issued: 2020
There’s another story here
- Authors: Nkosi, Lindokuhle
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) -- South Africa , South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63065 , vital:28360
- Description: Written in fragments and combining fiction and narrative non-fiction, this novella explores how South Africa's history of violence and current violence against women affects and influences how women relate to each other. Based in the knowledge that our memories and behaviours are linked to the experiences of our ancestors via our bodies, I engage what our violent history and the disappearing myths that are still embedded in our bloodstream mean for life today. Drawing on the experiences of several generations of women in my family, current affairs and the lives of women close to me, my novella picks at the fragile things that hold us together. I take influence from the prose poetry in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, and the use of fragmentation, myth and biography in Lydia Yuknavitch’s A Chronology of Water and Lily Hoang’s A Bestiary, and use an amalgam of genres to ask how we hold each other; how we breath, create, love and dream.
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- Date Issued: 2018
The weight of a tooth
- Authors: Perros, Robyn Helen
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144192 , vital:38319
- Description: My thesis is a fragmented, non-linear novella, comprised predominantly of experimental prose- poetry and fiction short-stories. I have chosen this approach in form to further explore my interest in ancestry and trauma, death and image-making, “reality” and fantasy, and the tension these invisible barriers create between the inner and outer worlds in which we simultaneously navigate, remember and forget. This thesis has been influenced both in form and content by the works of Eduardo Galeano, Osama Alomar, Lidia Yuknavitch, Susan Steinberg, Claudia Rankine, Lance Olsen, and Yasunari Kawabata, among others.
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- Date Issued: 2020
The talisman
- Authors: Reed, Graham Conan
- Date: 2013
- Subjects: Fiction , Short stories , English , South Africa , Creative writing (Higher education) , Short stories, South African (English) -- 21st century , South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , English language -- Writing
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5967 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1001817
- Description: The Talisman is an adventure story set in a future where much of today's cultural memory and technology has been lost. Following a hunting accident, a young man named Forest survives a life-threatening wound and embarks on a quest for knowledge. Rising sea levels, bands of marauders, wild animals and the perils of survival in the broken world are not the only problems facing the survivors. The nature of the collapse of the society, what triggered it and its subsequent unfolding, bequeaths an existential quandary upon them that only Forest, and a rare text as old as the earth itself, can unravel
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- Date Issued: 2013
The gentle pressure of the sky
- Authors: Watermeyer, Laura
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , South African fiction (English) -- Study and teaching (Higher) , South African poetry (English) -- Study and teaching (Higher) , Creative writing (Higher education) -- South Africa , Short stories, South African -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5996 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017780
- Description: A collection of lyrical, imaginative prose, ranging from prose poems to more formal short stories to flash fiction. I challenge the ordinary or commonplace by exploring the realms between fiction and poetry, realism and fantasy, reality and illusion. I would like reading the collection to be a sensory experience, one that draws the reader deeper into the imaginary. Stylistically, I work elements of poetic language into the narrative in order to express the mystery and remoteness that the stories require.
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- Date Issued: 2015
The frightened
- Authors: Msimang, Lethokuhle
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144004 , vital:38302
- Description: My novella tells the coming of age story of a young woman battling the trauma of objectification. It explores the intimate relationship between a woman and a man, the young and the old, and the camaraderie between women. Having spent the greater part of her youth in various parts of the world, my protagonist faces the stark reality of returning home to her native country. This triggers an angst which causes her to leap between lived experiences and memories. An elegy on how difficult it is to love while dragging the long shadow of shame, it uses short prose and prose poetry to reveal the intimacies and intricacies of self hate and clandestine romances, and to unravel the complexities of memory and forgetting. Built from non linear fragments it seeks to refuse cliches regarding love and to question easy assumptions around gender, family and the innocence of youth. I draw inspiration from Vita Sackville West’s’ All Passion Spent , which eloquently portrays the placid and flickering thoughts of an old woman taking leave from the frivolity of youth. I’m similarly inspired by the sincerity and confessional aspects of Virginia Woolf and French poet and photographer Alix Roubaud ’s journals and Van Gogh’s letters, as well as Lydia Yuknavitch, Max Porter and Elena Ferante’s autobiographical fiction. I also draw from J’Lyn Chapman’s chapbook A Thing of Shreds and Patches and finally Dostoevky’s Notes from Underground , for their blurring of life and writing, and their exploration of grief and death as a lingering thought, together with the oppressive urge to create. In addition I’m inspired by the poetry of a new generation of South African female writers like Vangile Gatsho.
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- Date Issued: 2020
The barefoot road
- Authors: Dingle, Brian Clinton
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Creative writing (Higher education) , South African fiction (English) -- Study and teaching (Higher)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5989 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017773
- Description: My novella is set in South Africa in a post-apocalyptic world. The drone technology theorised for the near future is widespread and scattered survivors live under the constant threat of drone strikes. The protagonist tries to negotiate these dangers and the looming threat of a slave empire to reconnect with his friends and family. He encounters bizarre hallucinations and flashbacks as a result of exposure to an unidentified gas.
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- Date Issued: 2015
Still
- Authors: Hall, Leila
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Short stories, South African (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63638 , vital:28450
- Description: This thesis is a novella in fragments set in contemporary Lesotho. It tells the story of a Mosotho woman in her 30s who has spent a long time living out of the country. She returns to search for a former lover who she hasn’t seen for 15 years. The nonlinear narrative follows her journey, exploring a range of themes, including sexuality, gender and class relations, memory and time, relationship to place, non-conformity and defiance in the face of societal pressure and conformism. The style of writing is inspired by a diverse range of writers, including Sonallah Ibrahim for his understated, sparse and minimalist prose, Tina May Hall for her ability to tell a story in fragmented vignettes, Noy Holland for her understanding of time as synchronous and non-linear, and Ayi Kwei Armah for his skill in evoking the feelings, textures and specificities of a place.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Shoutfighting and other fiction
- Authors: Rasmenike, Nonqubela Evelyn
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Xhosa fiction -- 21st century
- Language: English , Xhosa
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144500 , vital:38351
- Description: This document consists of three parts: Part A: English Half Thesis (Creative Work) ; Part B: IsiXhosa Half Thesis (Creative Work) ; Part C: Portfolio.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Secrets I keep
- Authors: Thurgood, Mikaila Rae
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Creative writing (Higher education) -- Research -- South Africa , Creative writing -- Fiction , South African fiction (English) -- Study and teaching (Higher)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5981 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015638
- Description: My mother had many failings. Her inability to cook. Her inability to work. Her inability to love. But her two biggest failings...those were the ones that had the potential to ruin my entire life, to ruin my brother’s life, to tear a family apart. More than anything, it was her inability to act. Claire is a young woman working in Johannesburg as a PA. She has few friends barring her au pair flatmate Beth and work colleague Marge. Her nights are spent trying to overcome the trauma of her past to find sexual fulfilment in a shallow world of one night stands. Whether she can set herself on a path towards a more normal life comes down to one crucial thing – forgiveness.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Sarkaiym
- Authors: Sutherns, Michael Courtney
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) -- Research -- South Africa , Creative writing -- Fiction , South African fiction (English) -- Study and teaching (Higher) , South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5976 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012998
- Description: The kingdom of Sansland situated on the Azanian Peninsula has been ruled by Sorricians, the sky people, ever since they landed on terra firma centuries ago. The indigenous population are forced to engage directly in the social and economic perpetuation of their own domination beneath the Sorrician heel. Until revolution flares in the antipodes, and soon, even the gods themselves seem to take an interest in the inevitable course of events. But all is not what it seems. The revolution appears to proceed too rapidly. The kingdom’s trade infrastructure collapses too easily. The Sorrician rulers are inexplicably and unrealistically confident in their ability to repel an attack on the capital. It will take a man of conscience, a regular soldier and a boy priest to restore appearances back to reality.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Salt in my footsteps
- Authors: Radebe, Mxolisi Vusumuzi
- Date: 2021-04
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) -- South Africa , South African poetry (English) -- 21st century , South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: thesis , text , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/178201 , vital:42920
- Description: My thesis is a collection of poems which focus on human experiences related to my background. I grew up in a countryside village, freely experiencing nature in unrestricted walks to the rivers and mountains; communal living instilled in me the humanitarian values which I uphold to the present. I use short and long lyrical prose poems to bring life and humanise the untold or unexpressed stories of my community. My use of simple everyday language and clear, concrete but surprising images that resonate with deeper meanings and emotions is influenced by Seitlhamo Motsapi’s poems, especially his collection of poems titled earthstepper/the ocean is very shallow and Mxolisi Nyezwa’s poetry book, Song Trials. Spanish poems in English translations by the 20th century Spanish poets: Blas de Otero, Juan Roman Jimenez and Federico Garcia Lorca, published in the book titled Roots and Wings have had a huge impact on my construction of images. I also draw from the free-form and narrative prose poetry experiments of poets: Mangaliso Buzani, vangile gantsho and Ivy Alvarez. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Languages and Literatures, 2021
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- Date Issued: 2021-04
Road to redemption
- Authors: Singh, Anirood
- Date: 2014
- Subjects: Creative writing (Higher education) -- Research -- South Africa , Creative writing -- Fiction , South African fiction (English) -- Study and teaching (Higher) , South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Detective and mystery stories, South African (English)
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5977 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013035
- Description: Lurching from day-today in the months before South Africa becomes a republic, booze-befuddled Indian private investigator Rohit Biswas does not ponder how he can secure his daughter's future after he became a widower and lost his job as police detective when he killed a man who fatally stabbed his wife. Salvation appears when a rich client hires the PI to find evidence proving his son did not rape and murder a white socialite. Fighting against seeming impossible odds in colonial-apartheid Durban and a sanctions-busting conspiracy, Biswas secures his client's acquittal. In the process he defies karma and redeems himself.
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- Date Issued: 2014
Red and other short stories
- Authors: Harrison, Francis J
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/141583 , vital:37987
- Description: Part A: Thesis (Creative Work);Part B: Portfolio. Final submission for the degree of Master of Arts in Creative Writing (MACW).
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- Date Issued: 2020
Penumbra
- Authors: Mahlangu, Songeziwe
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: South African fiction (English) -- 21st century , Fiction -- Social aspects -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:5979 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1015207
- Description: After failing his Post Graduate Diploma in Accounting Mangaliso Zolo takes an office job at a large insurance company in Cape Town. Anonymous and overlooked in a vast bureaucracy but with a pay check promising happiness and security, he slides into a series of personal crises that test his grip on what he believes in. When at his lowest ebb he leaves his job, grabs his bible and hits the streets his world closes in on him and he is eventually confined to a psychiatric hospital. Penumbra is a novel that explores the liminal area between faith and avarice, sanity and madness, modernity and tradition, friendship and enmity. It is set in contemporary South Africa, a society defined by alienation and excess.
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- Date Issued: 2012