jats:pRecent years have seen an aesthetic turn in postcolonial literary studies. There has been a widespread call for a move away from over-emphasis on the political context and content of postcolonial literary texts, because this leads to a reductive mining of these for political opinion. Instead, critics advocate a greater engagement with their literariness, with their different generic forms and poetic styles. It can be difficult, however, to look beyond any political comment such texts might be making on account of the politically charged contexts from which they emerge, particularly if their authors publicly express strong political views. This study looks at two novels that have strong political overtones, and that are written by politically outspoken authors and narrated in the first person by politically opiniated narrators; Driss Chraïbi's Le Passé simple (1954) and Kamel Daoud's jats:italicMeursault, contre-enquête</jats:italic> (2013). I will look at the possibilities of reading each text as a comment on literary practice that carries significance beyond its political setting.</jats:p>