ABSTRACT
A common thread the readers find in Waiting for the Barbarians, Age of Iron and Foe — and even in the second part of Life and Times of Michael K which has a third-person narrative voice in the first and the third parts— is the fact that all the narrative voices in these novels are those of first-person narrators who happen to be white. The plight of the other’s body is also what triggers the narrative in Foe, which is narrated by Susan Barton, a white female castaway whose thirst to know the story of the “Negro” as she calls him when she first sees him proves unquenchable. The protagonist and first-person narrator of Age of Iron is no better a mediator than Susan Barton in narrating a story that does not secure her presence as a white woman.
