Hofmeyr, IsabelNuttall, SarahLavery, Charne2023-05-102022Isabel Hofmeyr, Sarah Nuttall & Charne Lavery (2022) Reading for Water, Interventions, 24:3, 303-322, DOI: 10.1080/1369801X.2021.2015711.1369-801X (print)1469-929X (online)10.1080/1369801X.2021.2015711http://hdl.handle.net/2263/90602This introduction provides a wide-ranging framing for a set of essays that explores the topic “Reading for Water” in southern African literature. The introduction begins by demonstrating this method through snapshots of three seminal South African novels: Marlene van Niekerk’s Agaat (2006), A. C. Jordan’s The Wrath of the Ancestors (1980) and J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983). This is followed by a discussion of Sarah Nuttall’s essay on Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift, which establishes the framework for the essays that follow. These are discussed under four sections: Hydro-infrastructures, Multi-spirited Water, Bodies of Water and Wet Ontologies, and New Genealogies, New Chronotopes.en© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an electronic version of an article published in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 303-322, 2022. doi : 10.1080/1369801X.2021.2015711. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies is available online at : http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riij20.Going below the waterlineHydro-infrastructuresHydrocolonialismMulti-spirited watersReading for waterPostprint Article