In this monograph Theodor Adorno’s philosophy engages with postcolonial texts and authors that emerge out of situations of political extremity – apartheid South Africa, war-torn Sri Lanka, Pinochet’s dictatorship, and the Greek military junta. This book is ground-breaking in two key ways: first, it argues that Adorno can speak to texts with which he is not historically associated; and second, it uses Adorno’s theory to unlock the liberatory potential of authors or novels traditionally understood to be "apolitical". While addressing Adorno’s uneven critical response and dissemination...

This book reflects on the ‘literary’ in literature. Whether oral expression, Nobel laureates, or the rupturing event, the study adopts a style of intimacy to both its African locality and the wider Anglophone world: the world to which literature in South Africa continues to belong, albeit as a ‘problem child’.