Keridwyn Dovey

and to then open that out to wider questions of, you know, the mysteries of interpreting other people's past back to, you know, the past of nations and whole civilizations.

So I was definitely trying to find a way to process some of my own life, but to find a framework that would let me look at it as if it were an artifact outside of myself, because I think that's really the therapeutic power of writing fiction, that you can

craft something out of the mess of your life and somehow by being able to do that you can you can see it more clearly

Mm-hmm.

Well, I think, again, it comes back to what he was doing in taking that theory, which was about postmodern, postcolonial theory, which was so new at the time, which was all about destabilising the centre and asking questions about who had the right to write and that taking up a speaking position of any kind was taking up a certain form and wielding a kind of power.

And what Coetzee did was take that into a South African context to really interrogate where can I write from as a white South African who, even though his own politics were very much anti-apartheid, as were my parents, you are still part of a class of perpetrators.

And in writing about his, you know, sort of hiding his critique of the contemporary realities of South African politics at the time, embedding that within these, you know, kind of fable-like allegorical novels, he was undermining and questioning every kind of discourse that he, as a white writer, was tempted to use to find that speaking position.

So...

He's not just going to speak from a place and then hold his ground.

He is sort of, while he's doing it, questioning the very desire to be taking that stand.

And so for my mum, who had also at that stage lived in America and overseas, coming back to apartheid South Africa was a real shock to the system.

And I think that's what she connected with so deeply with his work.

Here was someone who was using

postmodern theory to say something about her own reality, her own dilemma of, you know, as a white South African in that context, what does it mean to resist, you know, a society that is basically rewarding you for who you are, for the colour of your skin?

How can you be part of that and also stand outside of it?

Well, again, you know, because to write about theory and to do it well, it's really hard.

So I kept trying to bring it back to these physical artefacts, which are the books that she owned, you know, from the very first imprints in the 70s.

So there was a small press called Raven Press and she did a mail order to get three New South African novels for nine rand at the time, which was about nine dollars equivalent.

And we still have all those books.

And my earliest conscious memory is of the cover of Waiting for the Barbarians, that first edition, which was very disturbing.