“Paradys” after the Fall: Mark Behr’s Novels and the Genre of the Plaasroman

Aesthetic and political discourses in South Africa have always been closely intertwined, during and after apartheid, the representation of the land for instance, as in plaasromans or farm novels, being thus used to reinforce racial divisions in the country. Nevertheless, anti-plaasromans also abound, as illustrated by Mark Behr’s three novels, The Smell of Apples (1993), Embrace (2000) and Kings of the Water (2009). Warping traditional depictions of the enclosed space of the farm or the garden, Behr’s tales are always, however, like plaasromans, narratives of loss. His use of spatial and temporal distortions and displacements undermines any claims to the land and highlights the unreliability of discourses on the landscape, be they in English or in Afrikaans; but simultaneously, in a post-apartheid and post-9/11 context, his novels may themselves fall prey to a not too dissimilar nostalgia, tinged in his case with autobiographical concerns.