Disgrace - SFBA Book Club

Paperback, 220 pages

English language

Published Sept. 6, 2005 by Penguin (Non-Classics).

ISBN:: 978-0-14-303637-1

(1 review)

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, J. M. Coetzee’s searing novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced, 52-year-old professor of communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University. Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. However, when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced.

42 editions

Ashwin reviewed Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

Review of 'Disgrace' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I seem to be inadvertently reading only Booker winners, like Disgrace, which I borrowed from my friend. I hadn't heard of the author J.M. Coetzee and didn't know that he had won a Nobel for Literature. The book deals with the disgrace of a man and the daughter he loves very much, set in post-Apartheid South Africa.

David Lurie is an old white man, a professor of English poetry and working on a book on Lord Byron. He has been divorced twice and is casual with satiating his sexual desires. He is thrown out of his university on charges of sexual harassment of one of his students who had consensual sex with him. Disgraced like this, he leaves town to live with his daughter Lucy who runs a dog kennel alone on a remote farm. David is a man of arrogance and ego, but he adjusts to the rural life …

I seem to be inadvertently reading only Booker winners, like Disgrace, which I borrowed from my friend. I hadn't heard of the author J.M. Coetzee and didn't know that he had won a Nobel for Literature. The book deals with the disgrace of a man and the daughter he loves very much, set in post-Apartheid South Africa.

David Lurie is an old white man, a professor of English poetry and working on a book on Lord Byron. He has been divorced twice and is casual with satiating his sexual desires. He is thrown out of his university on charges of sexual harassment of one of his students who had consensual sex with him. Disgraced like this, he leaves town to live with his daughter Lucy who runs a dog kennel alone on a remote farm. David is a man of arrogance and ego, but he adjusts to the rural life helping Lucy and her friends with their dogs. But even his daughter's idyllic life falls apart when some locals rape her and set him on fire. Father and daughter are left to workout their relationship and find their place in the changing humanscape of Africa.

This is a tragic book where slowly, subtly and surely everyone's life goes to hell. Coetzee's prose is simple and interesting and kept me engaged even though I knew that the characters were in for a world of pain. Coetzee downplays the color of his characters, but most of their troubles stem from they being white in a post-Apartheid South Africa, a place where the natives seem to want payback for the misery they endured in the past. The lives of the characters aren't settled even when the book ends. A lot of stuff in the book is left to the interpretation of the reader. For example, I'm pretty sure the dog with a limp at the end of the book which David agrees to kill is surely a metaphor for his own ego. If you've read this book, please do share your interpretations.

At 219 pages, this is a breezy read. A movie based on this book is now in the works. While the Observer calls this the best novel of the last 25 years, I don't think so. But a haunting good tale, it is.