Abstract

The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut was widely received as a text typifying the South African tradition of politically engaged realism, and its favourable reception was based to some degree on this perception. However, the novel projects apartheid-era literary tropes into a representation of a post-apartheid society; in consequence, these tropes draw on conditions which are absented from the narrative. This principle of absence is systematised in that the malign intent, and indeed the facticity, of all the apartheid-derived actions, sites and characters are represented as suppositional. This system of narrative choices is related to Michael Green's question: "How can a body of texts generated within, and in terms of dissemination and reception still held within, the episteme of anti-apartheid... be meaningfully related to one beyond apartheid?" (1997:7). The Good Doctor, by virtue of its narrative choices, fails in its attempt to position itself as a post-apartheid text.

Green, Michael. 1997. Novel Histories: Past, Present and Future in South African Fiction. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand UP.

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