Drawing on a series of interviews with Gerard Sekoto and on Sekoto's extensive correspondence with art historian Barbara Lindop, this book explores the life of an artist who left South Africa for exile in France in order to remain true to his creative talents. This narrative of exile explores the impact on Sekoto's artistic output - specifically on scenes from his native South Africa - of the artist's tenuous relation to his adopted environment and his dependence on memory. By interpreting Sekoto's life through a psychoanalytic process of biographical interviewing, Manganyi raises, in the context of South African life and literature, questions about the processes of memory which are so central in cultural studies worldwide. He also aims to establish a context in which to consider post-Apartheid literature. The book includes hitherto unpublished photographs of Sekoto in Paris.
