The Wretched and the Redemptive in John Berger’s Late Fiction

Abstract

The precarious existence endured by the communities depicted in John Berger’s late fiction bears some similarity to the condition of the human condition that Frantz Fanon examines in his The Wretched of the Earth. Throughout his adult life Berger maintained a deeply held concern for the plight of the marginalised and abandoned in society and often made this the subject of his discursive essays. This article examines Berger’s late fiction as representations of despair and of hope in the midst of the changing nature of contemporary society. In doing so, it attempts to establish connections between the state of the contemporary world which Fanon circumscribes. Achille Mbembe’s more recent work and, in particular, his reassigning of Fanon’s vision for a new world, is included in this reading of Berger’s fiction which, in its conclusion, seeks to demonstrate how some measure of hope for a different society can be envisioned through the imaginative and speculative possibilities which fiction promises.