Encounters and silence between fathers and sons: G.T. Didial and J.M. Coetzee

This article seeks to demonstrate how Cabo Verdean author G. T. Didial’s O Estado Impenitente da Fragilidade and J.M. Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg revisit an ancient Western mythological tradition (Abraham and Isaac; Oedipus and Laius; Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents). I focus on and how, through a complex rewriting process, both narratives discuss not only the tense relationship between fathers and sons but also the complex relationship between contemporary literatures of post-colonial African cultural systems and the literatures of Western cultural systems.