SOURCE: Chandramohan, Balasubramanyam. “Inter-Ethnicity to Trans-Ethnicity.” In A Study in Trans-Ethnicity in Modern South Africa: The Writings of Alex La Guma, 1925-1985, pp. 149-82. Lampeter, Wales: Mellen Research University Press, 1992.

In the following excerpt, Chandramohan studies Time of the Butcherbird for evidence of La Guma's transition from concerns about black Africans specifically to all ethnic groups in South Africa.

La Guma's pursuit of the notion of a trans-ethnic society in South Africa acquires greater complexity in Time of the Butcherbird,¹ an overtly symbolic novel. The use of symbolism in the novel is a consequence partly of the social divisions that compartmentalise life in South Africa, and partly of the author's exile since 1966. Behind the shift in literary technique lies a change in the mode of La Guma's social concern. Thus, the shift from near-naturalism in the early works to symbolism and allegory in the later works coincides with...