South Africa the first well known novels written by a black author in an African language was Solomon Thekiso Plaatje's "Mhudi", written in 1930. During the 1950s, "Drum" magazine became a hotbed of political satire, fiction, and essays, giving a voice to urban black culture. Notable white South African authors include Alan Paton, who published the novel "Cry, the Beloved Country" in 1948. Nadine Gordimer became the first South African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1991. JM Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 2003. When awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy stated that Coetzee "in innumerable
Beloved (novel) of protest that was published in "The New York Times Book Review" on January 24, 1988. Yet later in 1988 "Beloved" did receive the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award, the Melcher Book Award, the Lyndhurst Foundation Award, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award. Despite its popularity and status as one of Morrison's most accomplished novels, "Beloved" has never been universally hailed as a success. Some reviewers have excoriated the novel for what they consider its excessive sentimentality and sensationalistic depiction of the horrors of slavery, including its characterization of the slave