An old woman is dying of cancer in Cape Town. A classics professor, Mrs Curren has always been opposed to the brutality of apartheid, but has lived insulated from its true horrors. Now she is suddenly forced to come to terms with the iron-hearted rage that the system has wrought.
In an extended letter addressed to her daughter, who has long since fled to America, Mrs Curren recounts the strange events of her dying days. She witnesses the burning of a nearby black township; discovers the bullet-riddled body of her servant's son, and a teenage black activist hiding in her house is killed by security forces. And through it all, her only companion is a homeless man, an alcoholic who appears on her doorstep.
J M Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
- ISBN10 0140275657
- ISBN13 9780140275650
- Publish Date 24 September 1998 (first published 12 September 1990)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 June 2011
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 208
- Language English