This book explores the role of literature in the aftermath of political conflict. Essays explore concepts like truth and reconciliation, post-traumatic memory, historical reckoning, therapeutic storytelling, transitional justice, archival memory, and questions about victimhood and reparation. The book focuses on the experience of post-Apartheid South Africa, post-Troubles Northern Ireland, and post-dictatorship Latin America to define a new field for literary studies, and open it up to scholars working in other regional and national contexts. This volume is a valuable resource for scholars of Comparative Literature, Peace and Conflicts Studies, Human Rights, and other disciplines.

Introduction: Post Conflict Literature? Chris Andrews and Matt McGuire Part I. South Africa 1. Truth, Power, and the Role of Literature in Post-Apartheid South Dorothy Driver 2. Confession, Testimony, and the Construction of the Subject in Damon Galgut's "An African Sermon" and Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden Michelle Kelly 3. Problematizing Truth and Justice: J.M. Coetzee's Post-apartheid Texts Sue Kossew 4. Culture and Human Rights in Post Conflict South Africa Paul Gready 5. Archiving Mandela: Curating Memory and Visual Auto/biography in the New South Africa Kai Easton 6. From Lyric to Lyric: South African Poetry after Apartheid Jarad Zimbler 7. Haunted Imaginaries: Transition in Nadine Gordimer's South Africa Tony Simoes da Silva Part II. Northern Ireland 8. Hope, History and Rhyme: Poetry and the Legacy of the Troubles Matt McGuire 9. Representing Memory from Conflict: The Prisons Memory Archive Cahal McLaughlin 10. Egg and Sky: A Phenomenological Reading of Deirdre Madden's One by One in the Darkness Richard Rankin Russell 11. Metaphors and Metonyms: Culture and Education in the Good Friday Agreement Eamonn Hughes 12. Affective States: The Cultural Politics of Optimism in Northern Irish Fiction Caroline Magennis 13. "Absent and yet somehow present": "the Disappeared" in Contemporary Northern Irish Photography and Writing Stefanie Lehner Part III. South America 14. Incomprehensible Crimes, Literature, and the Definition of Enforced Disappearance Claret Vargas 15. Rodrigo Rey Rosa and the Perils of Truth Recovery Chris Andrews 16. The Brazilian Dictatorship and the Amazon: Persistence of a Colonial Model Idelber Avelar 17. From Private to Public Witnessing: Transitional Justice and the Revision of Official Memory of the Dirty War in Argentina Michael Humphrey and Estela Valverde 18. Allegories of Impunity: Revenge in the Post-dictatorial Brazilian Novel Rebecca J. Atencio 19. Post-conflict Argentina: Young Authors Reflect on the Nineties Ana Ros Part IV. Other Contexts 20. Therapeutic Storytelling or Fictionalised Pathography?: Autobiographical Spy Fiction by Former Stasi Agents Alison Lewis 21. Literature, Conflict, and the Pursuit of Justice: Memoirs from Palestine and Sierra Leone Rosanne Kennedy 22. "Experiencing Some Tense in Addition to the Present": 9/11 and Marking Trauma in Literature Shane Alcobia-Murphy 23. Tracing the Missing: Digital Storytelling as Historical Narrative Milissa Deitz 24. Justice, the Confessional, and the Violin: Jaume Cabre's Confessions Magdalena Zolkos

Chris Andrews is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

Matt McGuire is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.