A story told in prose as feverishly rich as William Faulkner's, In the Heart of the Country is a work of irresistable power.
J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.
On a remote farm in South Africa, the protagonist of J. M. Coetzee's fierce and passionate novel watches the life from which she has been excluded. Ignored by her callous father, scorned and feared by his servants, she is a bitterly intelligent woman whose outward meekness disguises a desperate resolve not to become "one of the forgotten ones of history." When her father takes an African mistress, that resolve precipitates an act of vengeance that suggests a chemical reaction between the colonizer and the colonized—and between European yearnings and the vastness and solitude of Africa. With vast assurance and an unerring eye, J. M. Coetzee has turned the family romance into a mirror of the colonial experience.
- ISBN10 0436256703
- ISBN13 9780436256707
- Publish Date 23 February 1987 (first published 28 October 1982)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 30 March 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 139
- Language English