Most writers battle with periods of being blocked; it's almost an occupational hazard. But in the writing of his last and greatest novel, 'A Passage to India,' E. M. Forster got stuck for nine years.
Rian Malan was one of the first younger writers to perceive and write about a darkness in the South African psyche that goes deeper than mere politics. To some extent, that's my territory, too.
One of the questions writers bump up against in their work, whether they know it or not, is about lying. Because fiction is a form of deceit, and one's abilities are measured by how convincingly one can persuade readers that these events really happened.
While apartheid was in operation, the set-up was a gift for writers if you were looking for a big theme.