Transitions: Half a century of South African short stories - Compiled by Craig MacKenzie

South Africa has witnessed enormous political and social changes in the nearly fifty years between the fateful 1948 elections, which saw the National Party sweep to power, and the process of liberalisation that began in the early 1990s and culminated in the birth of the country's democracy in 1994.

These transitions have been registered by South African writers, sometimes directly but more often in subtle and subliminal ways. From Bosman's modernist retelling of oral tales, through the acute social realism of Gordimer and Mphahlele, the social and personal conflict captured in the stories of Rive, Essop, Head and Roberts, the stories of growing up in South Africa (Ndebele) and returning after years in exile (Wicomb), to the innovative satire of Hope, Vladislavic and Isaacson, the stories collected here explore moments in South Africa's inexorable, and continuing, process of transition. In 1948 Bosman stood on the threshold of a dark era in South African history. Fifty years later we are again faced with fundamental change, this time of a more hopeful nature. Writers over the next 50 years will chart future transitions, and so the process will continue.

To enhance the reader's appreciation, the compiler has provided an overview essay on the South African short story from the mid-1800s to the present, biographical notes on the authors, and critical commentaries on the stories.