Human rights and transnational justice in the contemporary anglophone: Novel: J. M. Coetzee’s disgrace and achmat dangor’s bitter fruit

Abstract

This chapter takes Achmat Dangor’s Bitter Fruit (2001) and J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (2000) as case studies of human rights in the global Anglophone novel. Moving between an analysis of the novels’ reception history and their complicated, often deferred meditations on fiction’s ability to engage with contemporary politics, this chapter explains how human rights share with the novel a proclivity for narrative, but also how contemporary Anglophone fiction navigates similar terrain as human rights: Both are shaped by the (often competing) claims of global capital, international influence, and local or national culture. A literature review situates these novels in the broader landscape of humanist engagement with human rights.