Novel
Disgrace
J. M. Coetzee · 1999
Synopsis
David Lurie, fifty-two, twice divorced, teaches Romantic poetry in a “communication” course at a university in Cape Town. He seduces a vulnerable student, Melanie Isaacs; the affair becomes known, and before the university committee he refuses both to defend himself and to apologise sincerely, then resigns. He goes to live with his daughter Lucy, who runs a small farm in the Eastern Cape, helps her friend Bev Shaw at an animal shelter and gets to know Petrus, the neighbour. Three men burst into the farm: Lucy is raped, Lurie burned, the dogs shot.
Context
The novel appeared in London in July 1999 from Secker & Warburg. The same year, the ANC, in its submission to the Human Rights Commission's inquiry into racism in the media, accused it of reproducing racist stereotypes, and Thabo Mbeki publicly criticised its depiction of crime. It appeared in French in 2001 from Seuil, in Catherine Lauga du Plessis's translation, and was made into a film in 2008, with John Malkovich, a film that won a critics' prize in Toronto.
Who it is for
A novel in English of about two hundred and fifty pages, in a clean language, with scenes of sexual violence; translated into French.
Prizes and reception
Booker Prize 1999, the author's second; named in 2006, in an Observer poll, the best British or Commonwealth novel of the previous twenty-five years.
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