Non-Fiction Booms, North and South: A Transatlantic Perspective

This essay explores the differences between the non-fiction booms that have occurred in the United States and South Africa during the 1990s and the opening decade of the twenty-first century. Nixon asks what factors have contributed to the enhanced status of non-fiction in these two distinctive societies. In the process he looks at the politics of non-fiction's aesthetics and reception against the backdrop of neo-liberalism, gender and racial dynamics, the changing aura of the "real" in a digital age, and the politics of selfhood.