Zoë Wicomb (1948–2025): The South African writer who rediscovered the ordinary

In December 2014, the first Literary Activism symposium was held in Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Conceptualised by the writer Amit Chaudhuri, this series of interventions into the literary culture of our times recently celebrated its tenth year of annual symposia. Several writers and scholars spoke at the inaugural symposia, including two figures now deceased – Dubravka Ugrešić and Swapan Chakravarty. Others, besides Chaudhuri, included Tim Parks, Laetitia Zechhini, Rosinka Chaudhuri, Peter McDonald, Jamie McKendrick, Jon Cook, David Graham, and me.

A moving talk, later published as “The Critic as Lover: Literary Activism and the Academy”, by the South African scholar Derek Attridge, revealed powerful critical intervention and literary championship that was identified as literary