Michelle Pretorius
English fiction Ph.D. candidate Michelle Pretorius presented her paper, “Postcolonial Crime Fiction: Dealing with Trauma in the Postcolonial State,” at a conference in the United Kingdom.
Pretorius’s talk situated “Postcolonial crime fiction … as the new political novel.”
The conference, titled “Captivating Criminality,” was sponsored by the International Crime Fiction Association and hosted by Bath Spa University.
Pretorius’s paper grew out of the critical introduction to her dissertation. In her talk, she discussed “issues of identity, hybridity, multiculturalism, race, and the assertion of a non-colonial identity,” all of which, she explained are “central to postcolonialism.” Her thesis asserted “that the production and consumption of crime fiction in the postcolonial state provides a sense of catharsis for the postcolonial subject while simultaneously aiding the establishment of a new identity in the postcolonial state.”
Pretorius is currently at work on her second novel, for which she was granted a 2017-2018 John Cady Graduate Fellowship. Her first novel, The Monster’s Daughter, was published to rave reviews and is currently available at Melville House, Audible, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, and independent bookstores.
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