The Interplay of Fiction and reality

This book explores the interface of fiction and social reality in the area of child sexual abuse. The argument is that literature is mainly influenced by conditions of existence in the real world. The project rests on Fischer''s idea that “art itself is social reality” (1959: p46). Its central challenge is to subject Vera''s Under the Tongue (1996) and Jack''s Naked (2007) to an examination that incorporates social reality. At the centre of both novels, we find the silenced voices of abused girls and boys. This research argues that though Under the Tongue and Naked do not refer to the Zimbabwean “crisis” of the new millennium, they do contain powerful commentaries of one of its key aspects, that of child sexual abuse.