Waiting for the Barbarians (Penguin Ink)

by J.M. Coetzee

C C Askew (Illustrator)

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Book cover for Waiting for the Barbarians

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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.

Mark Rylance (Wolf HallBridge of Spies), Ciro Guerra and producer Michael Fitzgerald are teaming up to to bring J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians to the big screen.

  • ISBN10 1613834691
  • ISBN13 9781613834695
  • Publish Date 29 June 2010 (first published 27 October 1980)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Imprint Turtleback Books
  • Format Hardcover (Library Binding)
  • Pages 180
  • Language English