ABSTRACT Zakes Mda’s novel, Ways of Dying, centers on physical violence and death in black communities during the transition from apartheid to democracy. Rather than look toward a post-apartheid future that is anticipated by so many, Mda depicts the reality of death as the product of the volatile politics of late apartheid, demonstrating through the lives of his characters the ways in which systemic violence persists. Set in the early 1990s, the pervasive experience of death and inescapable poverty is relentlessly depicted, unmasking any illusion of positive transformation. The novel debunks the widely celebrated idea or impression of the country’s transition as remarkable or peaceful; its focus on the tens of thousands killed at the tail-end of apartheid refuses this untruth. Mda invites a critical understanding of black literal death, its horror in the questions about mourning raised, and the structural conditions that confine black lives even as a grand narrative is being told outside this novel’s pages.

中文翻译：

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Zakes Mda的《死亡之路》中的黑人日常生活和死亡负担

摘要扎克斯·姆达（Zakes Mda）的小说《死亡之道》（Ways of Dying）着重于从种族隔离到民主过渡期间黑人社区的暴力和死亡。Mda并没有期待这么多人所期望的种族隔离后的未来，而是将死亡的现实描绘成种族隔离制度后期动荡的政治产物，通过他的角色的生活展示了系统暴力的持续存在方式。背景设定在1990年代初，无休止地描绘了死亡和不可避免的贫困的普遍经历，掩盖了任何积极转变的幻想。这本小说揭穿了该国过渡时期广为人知的想法或印象，称其为杰出或和平。它的重点是种族隔离制度的末期被杀死的成千上万的人。Mda引发了对黑人文字死亡的批判性理解，