White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa is a collection of essays by Nobel-laureate J. M. Coetzee, originally published in 1988, and in 2007 was reprinted, with a new introduction, by Pentz Publishers. (The ISBN for this edition is 978090270006). "Since it first appeared in 1988, JM Coetzee's first volume of criticism has emerged as an indispensable reference in the study of South African literature. In the seven essays comprising the collection, he reads a range of texts, in various genres, which represent the endeavours of white writers to come to terms with the South African landscape and their tenuous place within it. The seven essays concern a wide range of works written in both English and Afrikaans, including the nineteenth-century travel writing of William Burchell