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A modern classic by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee. His latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.
For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.
J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between opressor and opressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.
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@mauskopf Received Sea of Tranquility as a gift. Likely next up for me after I finish Coetzee’s “Waiting for the Barbarians.” Hope it’s fractionally as good as her previous works and I’ll be V satisfied.
Assoc. prof. of English at Wesleyan U.
Happy to report ChatGPT wrote v lame answers to my Qs re Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" incl. one patently incorrect point: "He is also willing to use [the Barbarian Girl] as a pawn in his own efforts to gain favor with the ruling authorities ..." HUH?
Scholar of Mexico, Literature, Cinema, Food. Faculty @WUSTL. Life in STL, heart in CDMX. Read me at https://t.co/2jHDkqrzY0
@mervatim @nonsuchbook “The Stronghold” is the new (controversial in the titling) translation of The Tartar Steppe, which is one of the great novels of the 20th century, and you will notice that Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians draws nearly all from it. Love Affair is startlingly different!
"A remarkable and original book." --Graham Greene
"Coetzee, with laconic brilliance, articulates one of the basic problems of our time--how to understand the mentality behind brutality and injustice." --Anthony Burgess, New York
"A real literary event." --Irving Howe, The New York Times Book Review
"I have known few authors who can evoke such a wilderness in the heart of a man . . . Coetzee knows the elusive terror of Kafka." --Bernard Levin, The Sunday Times (London)