From Cape Town to the Marsh: A Spatial Analysis of J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K and Jafar Modarres Sadeqi’s Gavkhuni

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences, University of Guilan, Rasht, Guilan, Iran

2 Assistant professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences, University of Guilan

Abstract

The present paper studies J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Jafar Modarres Sadeqi’s Gavkhuni (The Marsh) (1362 [1983]) through a spatial perspective. To this end, the study avails itself of a constellation of concepts formed around Edward Soja’s Thirdspace, Michel Foucault’s heterotopia and Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope. Reading the selected novels through these key terms shows that despite striking differences concerning the nature and manifestation of space, both novels configure space as belonging to the realm of the father. In Life & Times of Michael K, Michael begins a journey across South Africa so as to escape this paternal realm, while the unnamed narrator of Gavkhuni, having failed to escape the memory of Isfahan even after moving to Tehran, starts to write in order to get rid of his nightmares about his father. At the end of the novels, both protagonists return to their first places: Cape Town and Tehran, respectively. However, as the beginning and ending points of the novels, these cities do not remain the same for them: Michael preserves his identity as a gardener even in Cape Town, and the narrator of Gavkhuni reconciles with the ever-present image of the father and Zayandehrud in Tehran through writing.

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Literary Theory and Criticism
Volume 8, Special Issue
Special Issue
March 2024

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