“Okay, then. Are those who appropriate our stories and use them for their own ends ethically wrong to do so?” I am determined that John Coetzee shall be publicly judged for taking and using my story, even if only by this tiny and limited forum.

“Do you believe that John Coetzee was ethically wrong to take the story of your rape and turn it into a book?” asks the sociologist.

“I do.”

“Who owns the rights to that story? You?”

“Yes, me.”

“Were you ever going to use it? Were you going to write a book of your own about what happened to you?”

“Possibly not. But I would have been happy for a sympathetic feminist writer to write it—someone who wasn’t going to portray my rape as a seminal, transformative experience for South Africa.”

“You wanted quality control over the telling of your story? You wanted it to be told in a way that accords more closely with your world view than John Coetzee’s version did?”

“It sounds untenable when you put it like that.”

“Well, actually,” says the Coetzee scholar, “I think you’ll find that rape is a pretty universal experience. When women experience rape, they usually feel some measure of shame after the fact. They often blame themselves. It’s only natural, considering that there is such a fine line between consent and the lack of consent these days. But there is nothing unique about rape. It’s pretty much experienced in the same way by most women. If you think about it carefully, you’ll realise that John Coetzee was taking the universal experience of rape and using it metaphorically for his literary purposes. You must try not to take it personally.”

“You must also recognise and acknowledge that Coetzee is writing fiction,” says the post-structuralist. “The world will be in a parlous state when fiction writers can no longer draw on real-world experiences—either their own or those of others—to inspire their stories. They must be able to write without fear or favour. They have to.”

“I’m not proposing a worldwide ban against fiction writers,” I say. “I am merely stating the fact that John Coetzee’s book caused harm—both to me personally, and to the fight against rape culture in general. He set my healing back and retraumatised me. And he made respectable the notion that the rape of a woman can be used as an extended metaphor for the cathartic violence that black South Africans need to inflict on white South Africans in order for the country to move forward to a new, multiracial future. The Lucy in the book consents after the fact to her rape having been a vital and transformative process. She becomes the vessel through which the new world order will be born, in the person of her brown child.”

“How is your personal journey of healing going now?” asks the sociologist.