Although the word ‘Africa’ is often used to indicate one people and one place, the continent is made up out of ethnic groups numbering in the several hundred. Naturally, all these different groups have their own form of communication, and their own cultural heritage, which has been greatly damaged by European colonialization. Indeed, the competition between rival European countries for parts of Africa was relentless, especially during the 1880’s. And, as a result, at the Berlin Conference of 1885 parts of the continent that were conquered, were divided between the European powers. The imposed European demographic borders on the modern African states, created by European colonialists, is just one example of the influence and pressure …show more content…
Secondly, Gordimer’s novel Burger’s Daughter materialized from the darkest days of apartheid, and the main character Rosa finds herself at a loss in a South Africa that she no longer recognizes: “The central character, Rosemarie Burger, is the daughter of a white communist, who spends much of the novel attempting to escape the political expectations put upon her” (O’Reilly 43). As a consequence, she is, as is the Magistrate in Coetzee’s novel, desperately in search of her own identity and sense of place. The powerful language usage by Gordimer in Burger’s Daughter resulted in a ban from the Directorate of Publications’ censorship committee in South Africa; “Burger’s Daughter is a political novel […] destined to engage political questions […] the central consciousness is very largely preoccupied with public issues” (Boyers 67). Even though, Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians addresses similar themes his novel was not banned, because of the fact that Coetzee used more fictive and allegorical language. Gordimer’s novel Burger’s Daughter is explicitly more realistic and politically charged. In an interview with David Attwell, Coetzee stated that he; “regard[s] it as a badge of honor to have had a book banned in South Africa […] This honor I have never achieved nor, to be frank, merited” (Coetzee ed. Attwell 298). Be that as it may, both fictional novels address how distorted and unequal relations between human subjects were created under colonial rule, resulting in a loss of identity for some and a sense of place among the colonized for