If you were to mention the simple words “Don Quixote”, most people, whether they have read the book or not, muster up images of a battered knight. This picture would not be complete without his trusty sidekick Sancho Panza. So what is it about this novel that so captures people’s imagination? Last year was the 400th anniversary of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote and its popularity is still going strong.

The work of white South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee often concerns itself with the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. When Coetzee won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, president of the committee Per Wastberg observed in his speech, “Coetzee sees through the obscene poses and false pomp of history, lending voice to the silenced and the despised.” By representing the exploited, Coetzee reveals the unspoken story, the silence of the victim. In this way, he directs our attention to the often tyrannous nature of storytelling itself: that we do not hear the suppressed voice, merely the loudest one.