This article presents a close reading of Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home, particularly its representation of the post-apartheid nation-state as a place of excess or, indeed, what James Ogude might call a “a site of eating”. To begin, I locate Mhlongo’s oeuvre within the long and rich tradition of black-centred artistic expression that is preoccupied with black masculinities and the politics/performance of ‘hustling’. Turning to Way Back Home specifically, I argue that the novel functions as a critique of the excesses, including the kleptocracy, of the ruling elite. I show that the novel ultimately reveals the underside of South Africa’s euphoric discourse of the ‘Rainbow Nation’. I wish to evoke not only his novel’s interrogation of the notions of home, belonging, desire and the unheimlich in post-apartheid South Africa, but also the sense in which failure is always already a certainty in postcolonial states which adopt and function within structures that were never designed for African progress.

中文翻译：

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“陷入腐败与快乐的泥潭”：Niq Mhlongo 的回家之路

这篇文章详细介绍了 Niq Mhlongo 的《回家之路》，特别是它将种族隔离后的民族国家描绘成一个过剩的地方，或者实际上，詹姆斯·奥古德可能称之为“饮食场所”。首先，我将 Mhlongo 的作品定位在以黑人为中心的悠久而丰富的艺术表达传统中，该传统专注于黑人男性气质和“喧嚣”的政治/表演。具体到《回家的路》，我认为这部小说的功能是对统治精英的过度行为（包括盗贼统治）进行批判。我表明，这部小说最终揭示了南非“彩虹国度”令人欣喜若狂的话语的背后。我希望不仅唤起他的小说对后种族隔离南非的家、归属感、欲望和无盖帽概念的质询，