
African Tragedy
A Novel by Wulf Sachs
Laurence Wright(Author)
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published on 25. March 2025
Book
Hardback
331 pages
978-1-0364-1861-8 (ISBN)
Description
African Tragedy is the unknown first version of Wulf Sachs's famous psychobiography Black Hamlet, presented here as an enthralling novel. The text has languished in the colonial archive, virtually unknown, since 1946. This is the story of the Manyikan nganga, John Chawafambira, as the author originally conceived it, a tale of psychic and political struggle in the inhospitable environment of industrialising Johannesburg in the 1930s. Digest this 'new' version and the earlier ones, Black Hamlet (1937) and Black Anger (1947), can never be read as once they were.
Reviews / Votes
'African Tragedy is the original literary manuscript of Black Hamlet, and its successor, Black Anger. Laurence Wright's impeccable scholarship radically revises these influential texts of South African psychoanalysis, Manyika traditional medicine, urban sociology, Jewish intellectual history and African political biography. [...] His groundbreaking research on African Tragedy offers a field-defining provocation in African Studies.'Dr Brendon NichollsDirector, Leeds University, Centre for African Studies, UKMore details
Edition
Unabridged edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Newcastle upon Tyne
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Unabridged edition
Product notice
With dust jacket
Dimensions
Height: 212 mm
Width: 148 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-0364-1861-8 (9781036418618)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
12/2025
1st Edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
€68.35
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
02/2025
1st Edition
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
€272.99
Available for download
Person
Laurence Wright is an Extraordinary Professor in the Languages and Literature Research Unit at North-West University, South Africa. Formerly H.A. Molteno Professor of English and Director of the Institute for the Study of English in Africa at Rhodes University, South Africa, he is a Rhodes Scholar and a Commonwealth Scholar, and a member of the South African Academy of Science. He is Honorary Life President of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa. He has published widely on writers such as Sol Plaatje, VS Naipaul, Edgar Allan Poe, RL Peteni, Joseph Conrad, Guy Butler, JM Coetzee, Tom Sharpe, Somerset Maugham, and on the history of Shakespeare in South Africa. He has also written on the future of the humanities in South Africa, on South African language policy, and on the Eastern Cape education crisis.