SOURCE: Yousaf, Nahem. “Resistance from Within the Prison of Apartheid: The Stone Country.” In Alex La Guma: Politics and Resistance, pp. 71-89. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2001.

In the following essay, Yousaf explores the existential identity of the prisoners in La Guma's The Stone Country, arguing that the apartheid regime invades the most minute aspects of these characters' lives and examining the ways in which they try to resist the restrictions imposed by the apartheid state.

The action of The Stone Country takes place in a prison. The novel tells the story of colored George Adams, a political agitator, who is arrested along with his African colleague Jefferson Mpolo for attempting to distribute “subversive literature.” The “stone country” of the title is the unnamed prison where we witness, through the subjectivity of George Adams, the confined lives and narrow expectations of his fellow incarcerated and his attempts to converse...