South Africa has a diverse literary history. Many of the first black authors were missionary-educated, and the majority of which thus wrote in either English or Afrikaans. One of the first well known novels writen by a black author in an African language was Solomon Thekiso Plaatje 's Mhudi , written in 1930.

Alan Paton published the acclaimed novel Cry, the Beloved Country in 1948. He told the tale of a black priest who comes to Johannesburg to find his son, which became an international bestseller. During the 1950s, Drum magazine became a hotbed of political satire, fiction, and essays, giving a voice to urban black culture. Around the same time, future Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer began publishing her first stories. Her most famous novel, July's People , was released in 1981, depicting the collapse of white-majority rule.

Afrikaans-language writers also began to write controversial material. Breyton Breytenbach was jailed for his involvement with the guerilla movement against apartheid. Andre Brink was the first Afrikaner writer to be banned by the government after he released the novel A Dry White Season about a white South African who discovers the truth about a black friend who dies in police custody.

Several influential black poets became prominant in the 1970s such as Mongane Wally Serote, whose most famous work, No Baby Must Weep , gave insight into the every day lives of black South Africans under apartheid. Another famous black novelist, Zakes Mda , transitioned from poetry and plays to becoming a novelist in the same time period. His novel, The Heart of Redness won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize and was made a part of the school curriculum across South Africa. John Maxwell (JM) Coetzee also was first published in the 1970s, although he became internationally recognised two decades later. His 1999 novel Disgrace won him his second Booker Prize. He also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

South Africa's unique social and political history have generated a strong group of local writers, which themes that span the days of apartheid to the lives of people in the "new South Africa".

See also

• List of South African writers