Postcolonial Disaster: Narrating Catastrophe in the Twenty-First Century by Pallavi Rastogi (review)

Abstract

of existence. The final fiction revolves around the slow demise and eventual death of the messianiclike child, David, who at the start leaves home to join an orphanage. Here, the figure of the orphan joins those of refugee and gypsy, as explored in the first two fictions, to further consolidate the sense of absolute homelessness. This condition is fundamental to Heidegger’s account of the meaning of being and the death as the source of our fundamental “‘Un-zuhause,’ not-being-at-home” (11) in the world. Although Pippin’s focus is thematic rather than formal, by eschewing bold claims for erudite excavations, he manages to avoid the pitfalls of an allegorical or “critical” (1) reading (a term much contested in recent literary studies). Although the reader might be left pondering what the politics or ethics may be of the final and elusive sense of “homecoming” (128), Pippin is an adept (and accessible) surveyor, and there is no doubting the solidity of the foundations he lays out. It will be for other scholars, however, to now attempt to contextualize the trilogy in relation to Coetzee’s other works (beyond Elizabeth Costello), and to give some further weight to Pippin’s claims regarding the existential seriousness of Coetzee’s writing (he briefly notes as a background context the Australian migrant crisis, but one wonders how it may be possible to connect the trilogy’s philosophical insights into a broader framework for thinking through Coetzee’s relation to the Global South). Minor quibbles aside, the book is testament to Pippin not only as a thinker but as a reader of distinguished quality.