Top five post-apartheid novels

'The end of apartheid isn't the end of life; it's the beginning of everything else,' said Nadine Gordimer once in answer to the oft asked question of what to write about now. Here are five novels that wrestle with the complexities of South Africa after the end of apartheid.

1. Disgrace by J M Coetzee A retired university lecturer's daughter is raped on her isolated farm but refuses to testify. Coetzee's Booker winning novel is a searing exploration of white guilt and black violence.

2. The House Gun by Nadine Gordimer Ostensibly a thriller, this examines South Africa's changing power base and urban violence through the eyes of a white middle-class couple whose son, accused of murder, is being defended by a black lawyer.

3. The Rights Of Desire by Andre Brink Brink's most recent novel focuses on the forced retirement of a librarian as a result of South Africa's rationalisation policy and his affair with a younger woman.

4. Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk Written originally in Afrikaans, and a success in South Africa when first published in 1994, Niekerk's debut both satirises and humanises a dysfunctional Afrikaner family seething with resentment on the eve of South Africa's first democratic elections.

5. Like Water In Wild Places by Pamela Jooste Jooste returns again to the subject of the National Party's shameful history in this third novel about the children of a prominent apartheid politician.