South African writer Zoë Wicomb embraced humanity in all its complexity

By Andrew van der Vlies, Professor, English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide

Zoë Wicomb’s first book, You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), is a tour through episodes in the life of a writer-character, Frieda Shenton. She’s not unlike but crucially not exactly like Wicomb (child of South Africa’s Namaqualand, graduate of what is now the University of the Western Cape, expatriated to Britain, both at an angle to and in love with her homeland).

It ends with a self-reflexive reckoning with the costs of writing. Writing about what – or who – you know…

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