Natasha Distiller writes with the urgency of a polemicist and, contradictorily, the coolness of a cultural theorist. ‘Looking at Shakespeare in South African literary history’, she argues, ‘is one way to look afresh at our cultural politics, particularly in the current context where racial identities are being hardened and simplified’ (143). She places Shakespeare at the heart of a fierce and far-from-resolved debate about ‘English’, ‘Englishness’ and ‘English Literature’ in a country bent on identifying itself afresh, but she keeps in focus South African writers (Plaatje, Themba, Modisane, Nkosi, Mphahlele) and politicians (Malema, Mbeki, Zuma). Given particular prominence are her references to Kapano Matlwa's novel, Coconut (2007).

The coconut – ‘black outside and white inside’ – is an easily maligned figure in post-colonial countries, and part of Distiller's project is to assert the viability of ‘coconuttiness’ in post-apartheid South Africa: ‘the African coconut is both/and, both Englished and transforming of Englishness. And this is a legitimate South African identity’ (45). Without a recognition of its complex history, South Africa will find itself a post-colonial victim of the ‘toxic politics of the binary formation’ (99). There is much more than this in the supple arguments deployed in this book, a painstakingly articulated essay on cultural politics. Or, to be more accurate, a collection of six related essays on the cultural politics of post-apartheid and post-Mbeki (‘the coconut president’ – [126]) South Africa.