David's Story

by Zoë Wicomb, Dorothy Driver (Afterword)

A powerful post-apartheid novel and winner of South Africa’s M-Net Literary Award, hailed by J.M. Coetzee as “a tremendous achievement.” South Africa, 1991: Nelson Mandela is freed from prison, the African National Congress is now legal, and a new day dawns in Cape Town. David Dirkse, part of the underground world of activists, spies, and saboteurs in the liberation movement, suddenly finds himself above ground. With “time to think” after the unbanning of the movement, David searches his family tree, tracing his bloodline to the mixed-race “Coloured” people of South Africa and their antecedents among the indigenous people and early colonial settlers. But as David studies his roots, he soon learns that he’s on a hit list. Now caught in a web of surveillance and betrayal, he’s forced to rethink his role in the struggle for “nonracial democracy,” the loyalty of his “comrades,” and his own conceptions of freedom. Mesmerizing and multilayered, Wicomb’s award-winning novel delivers a moving examination of the nature of political vision, memory, and truth. “A delicate, powerful novel, guided by the paradoxes of witnessing the certainties of national liberation and the uncertainties of ground-level hybrid identity, the mysteries of sexual exchange, the austerity of political fiction. Wicomb’s book belongs on a shelf with books by Maryse Condé and Yvette Christiansë.” —Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of A Critique of Postcolonial Reason

Genres: South Africa, Africa, Fiction, Literature, African Literature, Read For School, Novels

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Zoë Wicomb attended the University of the Western Cape, and after graduating left South Africa for England in 1970, where she continued her studies at Reading University. She lived in Nottingham and Glasgow and returned to South Africa in 1990, where she taught for three years in the department of English at the University of the Western Cape She gained attention in South Africa and internationally with her first work, a collection of short stories , You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town (1987), which takes place during the apartheid era. Her second novel, David's Story (2002), takes place in 1991 toward the close of the apartheid era and uses the ambiguous classification of coloureds to explore racial identity. Playing in the Light, her third novel, released in 2006, covers similar terrain conceptually, though this time set in contemporary South Africa and centering around a white woman who learns that her parents were actually coloured. She published her second collection of short stories, The One That Got Away. The stories, set mainly in Cape Town and Glasgow, explore a range of human relationships: marriage, friendships, family ties or relations with servants.

She was a winner of the 2013 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for Fiction.

Zoe Wicomb resides in Glasgow where she teaches creative writing and post-colonial literature at the University of Strathclyde.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for a class, and I can say it's definitely not an easy read. However, as I began to analyze the book , I began to understand more and more about the story and why it was written the way it was. David's Story is about truth, facts, fiction, and lies and the quest to find the hidden truth beneath the layers of time.

This story is mostly told from the viewpoint of an unnamed narrator who is interviewing David, an MK soldier, who feels the need to record his life and family history. The story takes on a biased approach and forces the reader to try and dissect the facts from fiction--what the narrator is implying or adding to the story, what David is adding to or subtracting from the story, other people's viewpoints on the story, the truths and lies of the apartheid struggle... Yet, through the muddle of confusing stories, perspectives, there is one truth that remains constant in this story.

Though it was a confusing read at first, I gradually began to appreciate this story more, and I found it to be a very addicting read, because as I mentioned it forces you to do "detective work" along with David and the narrator. I believe this is a very good book that focuses on the untold story and inner workings of the "other side" of the apartheid struggle.

[Franki · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was painful to read. It did not flow or read as a story which, I can understand, is part of the purpose of this experimental-type novel. It has a lot of very quotable quotes, but it did not seem to really go anywhere or have very much to say, except that nothing that can be said can be known, or known to be. It's complex, interesting, I guess, but I'm not going to search out anything else by this author.

[Mirte · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was very, very hard to make sense of this book. It's a postmodern text in that it is very conscious of its own construction, issues of telling the truth and of personal perspectives, etc. This does make for a difficult narrative, floating in the air, jumping from one time period to another, jumping from one consciousness to another and altogether not bothering too much with interpunction or a logical division of different paragraphs. There is artistry in that, I guess, but in the end, one should try to tell a story and not merely indicate how complex telling that story actually is, no matter how relevant this may be from a postcolonial point of view.

[Sanne Meijer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for a class I'm taking on post-apartheid South Africa and I had a hard time reading this book. It's such a complicated postmodern novel that I just can't give this book a rating. However, I did give it a 3 stars-rating since I'm still undecided and had to pick a rating. I need at least one more reading to grasp this book and maybe I'll never totally understand this novel since its intertextuality and story are so complex. The afterword by Dorothy Driver was really useful in understanding this novel, although I'd rather would've liked to read it before I started reading. All in all, not an easy book to read and a challenge.

[Kristen Bingle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tricky read but definitely worth it!

A little confusing at times as she moves through so many voices and time frames so I think I need to re-read this.

Explores the complexity and unreliability of telling stories as well as digging into the early days of post-Apartheid South Africa from a Coloured perspective.

[Signe Hansen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not really into postmodern writing at all, so this book never really got a hold of me... At all. But I guess it can be good if you like books like that?
What a generally helpful review this has been, don't you think? (Sorry)

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Wicomb died recently, I picked up one of the three of books of hers that lay unread on my shelves. I found this novel difficult (but very rewarding) for two reasons.

One, I knew almost nothing about the history of “coloured” nations in South Africa, not to mention the armed resistance in South Africa. I learned a lot, especially with Dorothy Driver’s extensive afterword, but I didn’t understand a lot. There was also the use of Afrikaans and terms from other languages that added to the confusion, although I felt they aptly contributed to the foreignness I felt reading this, something one doesn’t feel from reading, say, Nadine Gordimer.

Two, the story bounces back and forth between the early 1990s and times past, with a contemporary protagonist (David), as well as the two women in his life, one of which appears primarily as an offstage enigma. Wicomb keeps you on your toes with the movement among characters and historical chronicles, and their relations to each other. Definitely worth the attempt, but there’s probably a better place to begin Wicomb’s works.

[Marcy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book that I had higher expectations for and was a bit disappointed with. I haven't read Wicomb's work since her collection of short stories You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, which I remember loving. But that was at a time where I had a much deeper affection for experimental, postmodern fiction and I realised reading this novel that I no longer crave that kind of disjointed narrative. The premise of this book is quite interested and engaging--specifically the role of the guerrilla movement that helped create a South Africa sans apartheid--and that the primary person, David, around who the story is developed, is also the person who approached Wicomb asking her to help him tell his story. I also appreciate the layered attention to the more occluded past of South Africans, especially the Griqua, are given a voice through this narrative and I learned quite a lot from reading the novel as a result. I just wish the narrative was more coherent and cohesive.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story that provides insight into post/apartheid S.Africa and the difficulties of racial differences and identity. Zoe Wicomb does an amazing job capturing the culture during this time frame. Wicomb herself from S.Africa lives and teaches in Scotland. The story is both engaging and insightful. Wicomb weaves fiction into a real situation with elegance and style. To fully grasp the impact of what she has done and the effort she has made, I advise reading interviews and articles about both the book as well as Wicomb. Also, to do brief research on the events of apartheid and the problems in their racial divides/classification.

[Fred Daly · Rating 4 out of 5]

South African. Despite an excess of postmodern tricks, this is a very interesting book. Set right at the end of the apartheid era, it's about a man who has been a member of the Movement is having difficulty figuring out what to do and whom to trust. There's a long scholarly essay at the end by a professor to explain things; evidently the publisher wasn't confident the novel could speak for itself.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots of good humor here, in amongst the horrors of colonialists kicking everybody around. even, or maybe manditoryily, sarah baartman (the griqua african venus) makes an appearance, and her offspring. so all in all, quite a saga, with lots of trekking to a fro, lots of starvation, exploitation, sadness. but ultimately griquas are barely there anymore. one of the oldest human societies on earth.

[Kazima · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such an interesting book! Not the most easily read book: there's no traditional, easy to follow plot build up, but the mixed narrator voices were not as confusing as I was lead to believe. If you're able to just relax and let the story float into your mind, it is a great experience that unravels an amazing set of stories.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for Contemporary Postcolonial Lit.
I don't know what I expected of this book, but it was so much complex and wonderfully written than I thought it was going to be. There were moments that the narrators voice just shouts about everything and it's incredibly haunting and grounding. I can't wait to delve into it and read more for my essay.

[Maralise · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best 'postmodern' novel I've read so far. The engine that drives the story is a literary black hole, both infuriating and fascinating, never boring. There are two 'I' narrators, both compelling.

[YZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like it very much. It is messy.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this for my post-modernism and colonialism literature class at MSU. I was absolutely, completely in over my head.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate you Zoë Wicomb. Stop being such a man-hating feminist, that's my least favorite type.

[InfiniteLibrary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, that was a waste of a few hours of my life X<

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5, 3.75?

I can't say I was engrossed in this novel, but I will be thinking for a long time to come about all the questions about memory and accuracy, tensions between narrators and authors, fictionalizing/imagining stories of those whose stories can never be told in the first person... It's really fun to watch Wicomb play with this narrative and experiment to its limits. I think that's super necessary for the stories we don't know how to tell.

[Clare Grové · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the writing ito diction, syntax and imagery are ablaze with originality and passion, this story was difficult to read. Multi-layered and with multiple characters, the story is a piecing together of a person’s story. And in the final line, the persona author washes her hands of it herself. I’m now going to do the same.

[Storey Clayton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has a lot to say, but so layered in a clunky abstract series of lenses that it takes a tremendous amount of work to access. One of those books I probably would have enjoyed a lot more had I not been assigned it in an academic setting.

[Stanzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A historical fiction partly set in 1991 in South Africa, after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Even though I found the historical material particularly engaging, I found the narration repetitive and tedious at times.

[Daniel Adler · Rating 3 out of 5]

attempt at an "objective" history of the "coloured" resistance in south africa prior to the end of apartheid--difficult, important and beautiful, but not always gripping

[Phokeng Setai · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the narrative good but the weaving of the connection between characters a bit disjointed. Nonetheless, I learnt a lot about coloured identity and it’s similarity with Black-Africans.

[Anya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read. The history-present layering is super compelling.

Read for ENGL186 Post-Apartheid Novels.