HAUNTED TRANSITIONS: MEMORY, LOSS, AND HISTORICAL DISILLUSIONMENT IN DAMON GALGUT’S THE PROMISE AND DRAGAN VELIKIĆ’S BONAVIA
HAUNTED TRANSITIONS: MEMORY, LOSS, AND HISTORICAL DISILLUSIONMENT IN DAMON GALGUT’S THE PROMISE AND DRAGAN VELIKIĆ’S BONAVIA

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses the literary representation of the post-authoritarian transition in Damon Galgut's “The Promise” and Dragan Veliki's “Bonavia”. By staging an experience of reified historical failure, the fragmented literary constructions of these two novels explore memory and absence, as well as unstable national and individual identities. Informed by theories of cultural memory (Assmann), sites of memory (Nora), and post-transition literature, this essay constructs a comparative framework of unsuccessful political transition within the South African and Balkan literary fields. The essay argues that in these two novels, transition is not an event but rather the experience of an unfinished history, and it deploys family and national dislocation as figures for political collapse.

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