Writer protagonists Coetzee stages the paradox of postcolonial authorship: while striving symbolically to bring the stories of the marginalized and the oppressed to light, stories that heretofore have been suppressed or silenced by oppressive regimes, writers of conscience or conscience-stricken writers risk re-imposing the very authority they seek to challenge (2).

Pg 7 Fiction that Coetzee diminishes as radical metafiction, it failing to take account of the ethical, is in danger of swallowing its own tail, of becoming a poetic of failure.

Pavel, Nechaev Coetzee fictionalizes himself in Dairy of a Bad Year and Elizabeth CostelloIn an interview with David Atwell Coetzee informs his readers how politics and ethics contest for receiving critical interest. How is Coetzee dealing with authority?

Poyner , - censorship/ authors censoring father-son relationship polyphony Critical faculty providing the intellectual opportunity to militate against the censoring eyes of the regime G131 Jamesons argument distils the message of Coetzees novel: that as readers we must always question our role within the life of the text Poyner attempts to forge a connection between The Possessed and The Master of Petersburg but never goes on to develop the theme. Instead a lot of attention is invested to critique the nature of censorship in the novel. Pg 133Parallels between Tsarist Russia and apartheid South Africa are transparent: both are oppressive societies which have subjected their citizens to censorship, imprisonment, torture and exile, both nations are undergoing seismic change, characterized by Nechaevs remark in the novel that We are on the brink of a new age where we are free to think any thought (133). In her discussion of the chartering of revolution in the novel, Poyner points to Coetzees evasiveness, as she discusses Nechaevs critique of Dostoevsky: The idea is so tremendous that you cannot understand it, you and your generation. Or rather, you understand it only too well, and want to stifle it in the cradle (qtd. in PPA 137). 137 That The Master of Petersburg is written in the waning years of the apartheid regime, if we are mindful of Fanon, the critique of the practices of revolutionary politics are all the more timely # There is a detailed discussion in the chapter how Coetzees work has to do with his status as a white writer writing in apartheid South Africa. Poyner does mention the father-son dynamic and the polyphonic nature of Dostoevskys novel. 142Polyphony is one means of outsmarting the censor but is also a means of refusing to conform to societal expectations or to produce tendentious literature.Polyphony allows authors to withdraw from identifying with particular characters, to conceal their own point-of-view behind multiple consciousnesses and ironic voices, whilst it undermines any stable and coherent meaning.