This chapter considers the representation of impasse in three novels by Ingrid Winterbach, widely fêted in South Africa as one of its leading Afrikaans-language writers: Die boek van toeval en toeverlaat (2006; The Book of Happenstance, 2008); Die benederyk (2010; The Road of Excess, 2014); Die aanspraak van lewende wesens (2012; It Might Get Loud, 2015). It discusses the forms of precarious life at issue in these texts, and tests the usefulness of work by Lauren Berlant (on the ‘cruel optimism’ of neoliberal social life; on the cultural forms—including the ‘situation tragedy’—that reflect it) and David Scott (on the tragic nature of post-utopian postcolonial politics) for reading it. This chapter introduces a key concern of the book, the intertextuality through which its writers participate in local and global conversations (here involving J.M. Coetzee and Don DeLillo).