“Would you really count John Coetzee as an African writer of the diaspora?” I ask as we get underway. I know he is supposed to be interviewing me, but I have questions.

“Well, yes. He was born and raised in South Africa, and now lives in Adelaide. That’s the very definition of diaspora.”

“You know he doesn’t refer to himself as a South African any more, never mind an African? He calls himself an Australian. He has taken citizenship of that country and refers to himself and his fellow antipodeans as ‘We Australians.’”

“Yes, I’ve heard that. But it doesn’t negate the reality of his origins. He lived the first sixty-two years of his life in Africa, and only the last several months in Australia. That doesn’t make him an Australian, whatever he may claim.”

This is exactly what I think. It is wonderful to hear that someone agrees with me. Some of the stress of my furious internal argument abates.

You are not an Australian, Prof. Coetzee, you are not. And you cannot wish yourself into being one.

“This special edition we are working on deals with the disjuncture between real-life narratives and the fictionalised versions of them. And while we acknowledge that turning any experience into narrative necessarily involves a form of fictionalising, we are interested in exploring that tense and contested space between what we may loosely term fiction and what we may even more loosely term reality.”

I make assenting noises. So far so predictable.

“Your name came up because of recent revelations in the press about your assault. The narrative that appears in Coetzee’s book has been replaced, as it were, by a new narrative. We are no longer dealing with a standard farm-violence scenario—a stranger-danger, cross-racial sexual assault. It now appears that the whole incident was masterminded by a white man, your father. That changes the complexion of the thing, doesn’t it?”

I agree that it does.

“Which is not to say, of course, that Coetzee’s narrative has been invalidated. It remains an iconic novel of massive importance and resonance. But our knowledge of what really happened changes the lens through which we view Disgrace. We might, for example, start to question Coetzee’s automatic and uncritical acceptance of the stranger-rape scenario, mightn’t we?”

“Well . . .”

“But let me not get stuck in lecturer mode.” He chuckles. “The point of today’s exercise is to make room for your narrative. How do you interpret this new dialogue between what ‘really’ happened and what Coetzee wrote about? It must have added new layers of interest for you.”

“Interest doesn’t quite capture it.”

“I’m all ears.”