In this monograph Theodor Adorno-s philosophy engages with postcolonial texts and authors that emerge out of situations of political extremity - apartheid South Africa, war-torn Sri Lanka, Pinochet-s dictatorship, and the Greek military junta. This book is ground-breaking in two key ways: first, it argues that Adorno can speak to texts with which he is not historically associated; and second, it uses Adorno-s theory to unlock the liberatory potential of authors or novels traditionally understood to be "apolitical". While addressing Adorno-s uneven critical response and dissemination in the Anglophone literary world, the book also showcases Adorno-s unique reading of the literary text both in terms of its innate historical content and formal aesthetic attributes. Such a reading refuses to read postcolonial texts exclusively as political documents, a problematic (but changing) tendency within postcolonial studies. In short, the book operates as a two-way conversation asking: "What can