Poetics and Politics of Shame in Postcolonial Literature

David Attwell is Professor of English at the University of York in the UK and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He co-edited and conducted the interviews for J.M. Coetzee’s Doubling the Point Essays and Interviews. His monographs include J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing; Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History; and most recently, J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing.Annalisa Pes is Senior Lecturer of English at the University of Verona. Besides articles and book chapters, her publications include: Ex-centric Writing. Essays on Madness in Postcolonial Fiction (co-ed.), Sermoni, amori e misteri. Il racconto coloniale australiano al femminile, and Stories that Keep on Rising to the Surface. I racconti di Patrick White. Susanna Zinato is Associate Professor of English at the University of Verona. Besides articles and book chapters, her publications include: The house is empty: Grammars of Madness in J. Frame’s Scented Gardens for the Blind and B. Head’s A Question of Power; Rehearsals of the Modern: Experience and Experiment in Restoration Drama (ed.); Ex-centric Writing: Essays on Madness in Postcolonial Fiction (co-ed.).

• List of contributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Shame, Literature and the PostcolonialChapter one - Writing in, of and around Shame: J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael KDavid AttwellChapter two - Cursing the Fathers’ Curse: A Tragic Reading of White Shame in J.M. Coetzee’s In The Heart of the Country and Age of IronSusanna ZinatoChapter three - Dictator Games: On Shame, Shitholes, and Beautiful ThingsRita BarnardChapter four - "Unfinished Business": Digging up the past in Christine Piper’s After Darkness and Cory Taylor’s My Beautiful EnemySue KossewChapter five - Different Shades of Shame. The Responsibilities and Legacies of a Shameful History in Australian FictionAnnalisa PesChapter six - Contemporary Australian Refugee Policies and Shame as Reflected in A. S. Patric’s Black Rock, White City (2015)Dolores Herrero Chapter seven - American Postcolonial Shame, Fiction and Timothy BewesDavid CallahanChapter eight - "Like solemn Afro-Greeks avid for grades": Individual and Historical Shame in Walcott’s Earlier PoetryAngelo RighettiChapter nine - Shame, Justice and the Representation of Violence in Postcolonial Literature: The Case of Caryl PhillipsVincent van Bever DonkerChapter ten - Afterword: "A Swarm of Locusts Passed By"Timothy BewesIndex