Preface.

Chapman, Michael

Johannesburg and Cape Town are often identified with aspects of literary life in South Africa. This general number of Current Writing devotes its opening articles to the influence of Durban. The year 2010 marks the 150th anniversary of the arrival of indentured labourers from India in the colony of Natal. Lindy Stiebel traces the continuing contribution to South African culture and literature of the descendants of both the 'indentured' and the later 'passenger' settlers. From Grey Street to Umbilo, J U Jacobs offers the first extended treatment of Sally-Ann Murray's coming-of-age novel, Small Moving Parts, while Anton Krueger focuses on another writer from Durban, the playwright Greig Coetzee. Dennis Brutus, of course, spent the years before his sad passing as an honorary research fellow at the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

Despite the 'Durban' interest this number of Current Writing, as I indicated, is general and covers several individual authors and their critics, magazine culture, and a growing 'postcolonial' concern with forms of the spiritual.

With performance management a feature of the corporatisation of universities potential contributors and readers are reminded that the so-called KPA "Community Service" may apply to the academic community. Reviewing receives no financial-research recognition; the review, nonetheless, provides a valuable service to the literary community. This journal invites short reviews on 'current writing'.