Item: Disgrace
Rating: 3.00
Author: celinenyx

by J.M. Coetzee

**A BBC RADIO 4 GOOD READ**
'A great novel by one of the finest authors writing in the English language today' The Times

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student.

The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding.

For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.

**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**
**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**

Like many post-modern literary novels, Disgrace starts with sex. Professor David Lurie thinks he has everything worked out. Once a week he visits a prostitute, he teaches at the university, and once in a while he talks to his ex-wife or his daughter. An affair with a student makes his entire system collapse, and he is shunned from his life.

Disgrace is a double novel. We follow the disgrace of David, and the disgrace of his daughter. It's both about being human, and about being a human in post-apartheid South-Africa. The writing style is clipped and dry. I found the story of David's daughter, who lives as a white single woman in a black dominated countryside fascinating, though heart-breaking. Disgrace isn't a history lesson, but a tale of what it's like for some people to live in South-Africa. I can't really speak about its accuracy, but since Coetzee has won a Nobel Prize for literature I trust his judgement.

Disgrace (Windsor Selection S.) (First Chapter S.)

by J.M. Coetzee

Reviewed by celinenyx on Dec 28, 2014

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