Since the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in 1996, the question of forgiveness has become central to human rights discourse. In this course, we consider global political catastrophes and their consequences through a study of 20th-century fiction, criticism, memoirs, and film. We examine the Holocaust, South African apartheid, the Chilean military dictatorship, and the Rwandan genocide. We study not only forgiveness, but also related notions, such as retributive and restorative justice, individual and collective responsibility, the “virtues of vengeance,” healing, memory, grief, compassion, shame, and silence. This is a world literature course covering African, European, and South American literature. Texts include Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower, J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden, Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Theoretical texts by Jean Améry, Hannah Arendt, Julia Kristeva, Primo Levi, Friedrich Nietzsche, Wole Soyinka, and Desmond Tutu.