Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee

Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching a class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هجدهم ماه آوریل سال2006میلادی

عنوان: رسوایی؛ نویسنده: جی. ام. کوتسی؛ مترجم: حسن بلیغ؛ تهران، نشر آگرا؛ سال1383؛ در285ص؛ شابک9649325980؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان افریقای جنوبی - سده20م

عنوان: رسوایی؛ نویسنده: جی. ام. کوتسی؛ مترجم: محسن مینوخرد؛ تهران، نشر چشمه؛ سال1387؛ در289ص؛ شابک 9789643625351؛

کتاب «رسوایی» داستان زندگی استاد میان‌سال زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی دانشگاهی در شهر «کیپ تاون» آفریقای جنوبی‌» است که به‌‌ خاطر رابطه‌ ی جنسی با یکی از دانشجویان دختر کلاسش بدنام می‌شود و کارش به رسوایی می‌کشد؛ «دیوید لوری» در زندگی دو بار ازدواج کرده اما هر دو بار هم شکست خورده و از هر دو همسرش جدا شده است، از همسر نخستین خویش که «هلندی» بوده، دختری به نام «لوسی» دارد؛ به همین خاطر اوایل رمان، هر پنج‌شنبه به یکی از خانه‌های عمومی شهر می‌رود و به‌سان مشتری وفاداری سراغ اتاق شماره‌ ی یکصد و سیزده را می‌گیرد و در مقابل پرداخت اندک پولی، نیاز خود را برطرف می‌کند.

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 08/04/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 20/02/1401هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

wow..what a novel!
الخزي..الاحساس با��عار..أصعب إحساس ممكن أي حد يحس بيه..
الرواية بتتكلم عن دكتور جامعي أقام علاقة جنسية مع طالبة عنده ومع ذلك هو رافض يعترف إنه غلطان او إنه حتي لازم يتغير بل بالعكس هو بيبرر أفعاله علي إنها غريزة إنسانية طبيعية..

"إن قضيتي ترتكز علي حق الشهوة،علي الرب الذي يجعل حتي أصغر طائر يرتعش..!
لست مضطرا إلي أن أصبح إنساناً أفضل..لست مستعداً للاصلاح اريد أن أبقي كما أنا..!"

الرواية في أحداثها بتتكلم عن العنصرية في جنوب أفريقيا بطريقة غير مباشرة وكمان بتسلط الضوء علي أنواع مختلفة من الخزي..إحساسك بالعار مش لازم يكون نتيجة غلطتك إنت، ممكن تكون ضحية شخص آخر ومع ذلك تحس بالعار.. زي الست اللي بتتعرض للاغتصاب مثلاً..

أعتقد إن كويتزي عاوز يقولنا إن كلنا ممكن في فترة من حياتنا نحس بالخزي لأسباب كتير، سواء كنا غلطانين أو لأ..بس المهم إننا مش لازم نستسلم ولا ندفن راسنا في الرملة..
"إن ما لا يقتل..يقوّي.."
رواية مش كبيرة في عدد صفحاتها ..تقيلة في محتواها ..مؤلمة وممتعة جداً في قرائتها..

القراءة التانية لكويتزي بعد ' في إنتظار البرابرة' و يبدو كدة إن سنة الكورونا بالنسبة لي حتكون سنة إكتشاف الكُتاب المتميزين جداً اللي كويتزي أكيد واحد منهم...
corona is not that bad after all;)

"كم هو مُذلّ ولكن لعلها تكون نقطة بداية جيدة لعل هذا ما ينبغي علي أن أتعلم بقبوله.. أن أبدأ من الصفر..بدون أي شئ..بلا خيارات ولا ملكية ولا حقوق ولا كرامة..!"

I’ve read scores of reviews of this book by women, and I’m still dissatisfied. Will a woman explain the reasons why Lucy made her final decision about the baby and her living arrangements? For me, it’s the most controversial moment in Disgrace, as it was for Lucy and her father Mr Lurie, the 2 main characters. I respect a woman’s right to choose--or not to choose--her pregnancy, and I certainly don’t judge how she leads a conspicuously difficult life. I may question, disagree, and debate, but it’s ultimately her decision. Like any man in these delicate, personal situations, I offer clumsy advice, I rush to problem-solve, I’m unlearned about women’s need to achieve a particular balance of thought and emotion, and I’m noticeably clueless about the nuances women develop in dealing with difficult decisions. I think about my conscious if my daughter was in a similar situation. I would fight and console her, dicker and placate her, disagree and understand her--I’d yell and weep--I’d have a hell of a fight, then, with my piece said, I would wholly support my daughter’s decision. And yet, in this book’s odd, precarious denouement, I find myself with man-blinders on, agreeing completely with the father that Lucy is making an awful decision. Her life...okay...but what a poor decision--my opinion, my piece, obviously.

Race relations is the road--the washer board road--this novel is driven over. It’s the key perversion that makes this Afrikaner story more intriguing than its American Caucasian peer. South African race relations make America’s version seem tepid and anachronistic, by comparison almost charming. Here in the US we talk about financial reparations for slavery 150 years ago, but relative to comparison, we’ve integrated quite nicely in the last 30 years. In South Africa, it’s been 16 years since Apartheid was abolished by vote, and relations there, I suspect, aren’t too different than they were here in the ‘50s and 60’s. Race relations in S. Africa--if not a rolling boil--are simmering hard. Remnants of Apartheid still starkly hue the culture and politics in S. Africa. How could they not? The previously enslaved race is the current living majority, and they have a memory.

***begin SPOILER ALERT***
[I don’t select spoiler alerts for my reviews because (1) people often skip them, (2) you’re an adult and can stop reading when your threshold is crossed, and (3) you can plainly read my alert in bold.]

So, Lucy is raped by a couple black men from a local tribe and becomes pregnant (her visiting father set afire). She’s the last of a long line of white people farming the land in this eastern veld of South Africa. She’s determined to farm fraternally on the land, even though her black neighbors are, as it were, village leaders and greedily encroaching on her land. The book is written so that we don’t know--but strongly assume--the bi-racial rape was precipitated (condoned?) by her neighbors as a warning, as a lesson. Later we discover that a neighbor is related to the rapist and is openly sheltering him and denying the man’s fault. Local black police officers are lampooning an investigation.

Lucy, a lesbian with no partner, refuses to press charges. Instead, as resolution to the local drama regarding the “presumed” rape, she decides to dowry her land to the elder black man in exchange for becoming his third wife. If the man will protect her and her unborn baby, he can have everything. Lucy’s decided that her dismissal of the rape is her reparation to the rightful people of the land. A rape, a bastard child, an unknown father, loss of property rights, and a very difficult future--Lucy’s reparations.

Mr Lurie, my proxy in the novel, offers his daughter removal from the continent in order to make a new start with extended family. He will accept the baby if Lucy wants to keep it, but “for your safety Lucy, you have to get away from here.” This could happen again. Your friends have left, and this is a notorious badlands for whites on the Eastern Range. What are you doing?

***end SPOILER ALERT***

Indeed. What is she doing?

This is a book with a perfect title. I haven’t read a story in a while where the title captures the essence of a book in ONEWORD. Mr Lurie is an unlikeable cad and a scandalized debaucher. He leads a scandalous life and finds himself in repeated Disgrace. So the author is challenging me to balance Mr Lurie’s choices, unequivocally disgraceful, with his daughter’s choices which may or may not be called Disgrace? An interesting juxtaposition.

1. Is she protecting her safety? It’s safer to move.
2. Why should she have to move, it’s her home? Things change.
3. Is she ignoring a painful experience? A decision like this may haunt you in the long run.
4. Is she still hurting, emotionally, traumatically from the incident? Take a break, collect your thoughts--but collect them at a distance, a place removed from the scene.
5. Is she purposefully acting against her father’s recommendation, and by extension, against all men that purport to understand clearly these kinds of situations?
6. Was her decision a challenge to the question why she--a privileged Afrikaner--deserves a means of escaping her memory, when a black woman in a similar situation lacks the same means of removal?

Now ladies if you respond, please be gentle (and have read the book). I found this an intriguing story, but had serious doubts about the woman’s decision. Rape is not reported 90% of the time, I know, but the tribal-like decision Lucy made was difficult for me to comprehend. You can explain it to me, scold me, disagree, whatever, but this is why I read books. To learn perspective. I just started Physician Assistant school, and I’m overwhelmed with study, so I’ll read your responses. Thanks.

I minus a star because the dialogue was cumbersome and overworked. Real people, especially in crises, do not speak in perfectly elicited compound-compound sentences. The dialogue felt over-rehearsed, over-edited. It wasn’t choppy enough to mirror the action. On the plus side, there are another 200 pages in Disgrace apart from Lucy’s predicament, and they’re believable and ugly--in a mid-life crises kind of way.

New words: sodality, vibracrete

Oh this seems to be one of those books which becomes more awkward and difficult with the second reading, maybe then it is best to avoid reading a third time.

I might say that it is a novel about the end of the Roman Empire. Imperial authority is mostly gone, certain imperial organisations remain like the police and the hospitals, but they are grimly or comically ineffective. A Roman way of life still persists in the towns and cities, at least for the time being, but there are signs that this may be a temporary state of affairs, in the countryside though, a slow revolution is taking place, the old slaves are becoming the new masters, this is not pleasant for the old masters and maybe not easy for the new ones either.

Alternatively I could say it is the story of a serial seducer, one David Laurie, who discovers the limits of his seductive powers, for him meaning is in the pursuit, possession is more difficult, and relationships are things that happen to other people, there is an interesting tension between his fairly cold, dispassionate physical appraisal of women (in particular, but not exclusively) and his actions which seem so polished and habitual that he seems to think they are automatic. This is the Byronic story  though that is part of the poetic strand of the book which I think goes back as far as William Langland quoting his 'fair field full of folk' - a poem from an age of disorder and social breakdown, the poet dreams of justice and good governance, Lurie references Wordsworth too who as a young man was excited by the French Revolution, but who in older age became increasingly reactionary, all of which is in line with the themes of the novel - and Byron is invoked often enough - just with less homosexuality and no dying (on page at least) on the ruins of Missolonghi

Again it is the story of David Lurie, Professor of communications who struggles to communicate either to people around him, with animals or to us the reader - I felt subtexts throughout - however in an epic case of 'it's not me, it's you' he blames the insufficiencies of language for his difficulties.
English in particular, but I doubt somehow than any language can transcend his mindset of the entitled seducer and Byronic renunciation of responsibility except for Quixotic causes  sorry, Greek independence .

During the book he reflects on various words and their roots to the point that my attention was drawn to one word he does not think about - rape, and it's heritage as a form of property crime, a crime traditionally not against the raped person, but against the paterfamilias. Within that is the notion of the possession of women and therefore of sexual violence as a form of competition between men. From that perspective one can see a series of silo conversations throughout the book, men in one silo discussing women who sit in their own silo not a party to their own fates: Lurie and Isaacs, Lurie and Melanie's possessive boyfriend, Lurie and Petrus. The conversations though are the consequence of violence, jostling over possession, or the marking of territory. Petrus' new house will cast a long shadow over his pregnant neighbour's land, that might be seen as a threat, or as security, maybe the one requires the existence of the other, my mind is lost in tautology. Lurie is hurt when his daughter will not, or can not talk to him about certain things but that is in line with the nature of dialogue in the book - no cross silo fratinisation!

I am unsure about the relationship between Lurie, the narrative voice and the author. Since writing the book the author has abandoned South Africa for Australia, I wonder if this book is a literary weighing up of options, testing the possibilities of lives that could be led, concluding that in the end South Africa can offer at best only castration (loss of potency in the broadest sense) or the comparative mercy of a lethal injection - for this dog has had its day. The author is a vegetarian and the character Lurie develops suddenly and without warning a squeemishness about meat eating and the violence inseparable from that habit.

Here too one might read the story as a dialogue about urban and rural life, things are civilised in the city, out in the countryside the reality beneath town manners is inescapable, that sheep will be slaughtered and you will be served it's flesh, you'd best hope not too raw.

What though of the title? Who is disgraced? What disgrace are we meant to have in mind, if we crumble the word between our fingers can we see a fall from Grace, and who was in Grace? What was that Grace? ? Or is the entire book an Augustinian parable - this our life after Eden and outside of God's Grace - violence, possession, the impossibility of communication, no city of God, only civilisation as polite deceit covering up what we do not want to face. Was it not upon hearing the news of the fall of Rome to the barbarians that Augustine of Hippo began work on The City of God?

There is also the unspoken crime of the dispossession of Black families in the wipes, in South Africa. Grace, if we see it as innocence, might be innocence about one's own history, innocence aboutvthis harm one has done to others. Disgrace, finally, might be a falling into knowledge, an awareness of sin and guilt.

Sud Africa post-apartheid, David Lurie, cinquantaduenne professore universitario non ama quella professione che gli dà da vivere. Proveniente da una famiglia di sole donne, con due matrimoni alle spalle, una figlia lontana, affranto da un inaccettabile senso di invecchiamento ed invisibilità.
Sospeso tra una inconsistente routine , inserito in un quotidiano diviso tra frequentazioni sessuali a pagamento e studenti ignoranti e disinteressanti, inciampa in una passione amorosa per una studentessa.
Denunciato dal fidanzato e dal padre di lei, di fronte ad una commissione d' inchiesta ammette colpe e responsabilità ma, rigettato il pentimento richiesto, decide di abbandonare per sempre il mondo accademico.
Si trasferirà in campagna dalla figlia Lucy, venticinquenne ex hippie con inclinazioni omosessuali che vive accudendo cani in pensione e vendendo fiori al mercato .
È una figlia che ha da sempre trascurato, I due non si sono mai frequentati ed amati, vivono questa parentesi di convivenza memori di un passato inesistente.
Saranno vittime di un episodio di violenza e devastazione, in primis per Lucy, e saranno costretti a ridefinire futuro ed aspettative.
Il cuore del romanzo vive del rapporto padre-figlia, a contorno quel senso di vergogna che riguarda la propria vita accettando inspiegabilmente la violenza subita da parte di Lucy ed espiando gli errori commessi, per David .
Se David si macchia di un abuso , Lucy è la vittima sacrificale di una violenza gratuita e bestiale impregnata di odio, vendetta, macchinazione, divenendo semplice oggetto di scambio, merce, debito da ottemperare.
Inserita nella cruda ed ancestrale realtà di un Sud Africa post apartheid che vive di aspre contrapposizioni economiche, razziali, di convivenza civile, emerge una dimensione strettamente privata, uno scambio umano e relazionale padre-figlia, uomo-donna. Questa terribile esperienza sconvolgerà la vita di entrambi, si farà comunanza e condivisione, nella disperazione, ma in parte ciascuno manterrà la propria visione del mondo, si andrà incontro al proprio destino .
Un romanzo dalle tinte forti, aspre, vive, inserito nella dura realtà sudafricana che amalgama una serie di tematiche socio-relazionali, pubblico-private, di convivenza interazziale e relazioni interpersonali complesse .
Un linguaggio, essenziale, costruito sul presente, senza fronzoli o declinazioni poetiche, proprio come la realtà descrittavi.

"Pensa che a Dio sia sufficiente, se vivrò per sempre nella vergogna?"

Il nocciolo
Un uomo colto nella sua umanità manchevole e lontana dalla perfezione perchè in balìa delle proprie debolezze.
Un uomo che si crogiola nella sua rassicurante routine finchè un giorno accade qualcosa di inaspettato che devierà il corso della vita.

Ma non è questo.
Non ancora.

Il vero rivolgimento è la prova che bisogna affrontare: quando succede qualcosa di ancora più sconvolgente, che non avresti mai pensato perchè rientra nell'ordine delle cose che accadono solo agli altri.
Un episodio che apparentemente è privato diventa per Coetzee emblema di un malessere sociale.

L'uomo e la Storia: questo è il nocciolo.


"E’ la Storia che ha parlato attraverso di loro. Una Storia di torti. Mettila in questi termini, forse ti aiuterà. Ti è sembrato che ce l’avessero con te personalmente, ma non è così. Si è trattato di un comportamento atavico.


Due parole sulla trama

Ci sono tre momenti cruciali:

1. David Lurie, insegnante universitario fa il suo mestiere senza alcuna passione, E' con ardore libidinoso che, invece, si dedica alle sue studentesse. Melanie, in particolare, lo travolgerà in uno scandalo che sarà motivo del suo allontanemento dall'ateneo.
2. Lurie si prende una pausa di riflessione e va in campagna dalla figlia Lucy le cui scelte di vita l'hanno allontanata dalla capitale e dallo stile di vita genitoriale.
3. Se a Città del Capo il post- apartheid genera imbarazzo, in provincia si palesa in vero e proprio odio. Dalla Storia non si scappa.

Wordsworth e Byron.

Il professor Lurie si professa seguace di William Wordsworth, capostipite di quel romanticismo prevalentemente popolare ed arcadico.
Azzardo un accostamento per opposizione tra personaggio e poeta.
Wordsworth inneggia ad una poetica che sia più vicina al popolo e sostiene pertanto un linguaggio che sia comprensibile da esso allontanando ogni forma oscura e mettendo in primo piano l'importanza della comunicazione.
David Lurie ha nella prima parte del romanzo proprio difficoltà a comunicare: le sue amanti fingono comprensione, i suoi studenti assistono apatici alle sue lezioni.
La seconda parte del libro si apre con l'abbandono del mondo accademico e concide con la decisione di Lurie di dedicarsi ad una composizione lirica che ha per protagonista George Gordon Byron e non sarà un caso. Si tratta, infatti, di quel poeta che scelse l'auto-esilio dopo aver dato scandalo con una sfrenata condotta sessuale.
Byron e Lurie schiavi degli istinti; ribelli nei confronti di chi chiede loro di cospargersi il capo di ceneri.


Disgrace

Questo il titolo originale.
Come verbo significa: disonorare qualcuno, comportarsi in maniera vergognosa, disdicevole...

Un libro impregnato di vergogna.

Vergogna del bianco che appartiene al popolo dell'apartheid.
Vergogna nel non riuscire a comunicare, farsi comprendere e comprendere (sia a livello di genere che di etnia).

Lucy come emblema della vergogna a cui si sacrifica in una sorta di simbolica espiazione collettiva.

Vergogna per il corpo che invecchia.

"L’intera vicenda è vergognosa, dal principio alla fine. Vergognosa e anche volgare "


Assonanze

1950- "L'erba canta"- Doris Lessing
2000- "La macchia umana"- Philip Roth

Note: just realized there might be spoilers in my original review. I've now indicated them below! I don't think Coetzee is really a plot-driven, spoilery kinda author. And actually, these details might be helpful going in. Make up your own mind!

This is the first book I’ve read by South African Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, but it won’t be the last. There’s a tough, uncompromising intelligence at work here, and an admirable ambiguity to the narrative and voice.

I’m not surprised it was adapted into a film (which I haven’t seen). Reading this book felt like watching something by a modernist master like Antonioni: lots of disturbing/haunting imagery and plenty to think about, but no easy or pat answers.

Middle-aged poetry professor David Lurie, recovering from a scandal at his Cape Town university involving his affair with a student, retreats to the country to live with his daughter Lucy on an isolated smallholding in the Eastern Cape. (I had to look up “smallholding”: it’s an “agricultural holding smaller than a farm.”) Soon violence erupts there – Lucy is gang-raped by three black men, while Lurie is locked in a room and set on fire. The guard dogs in their kennel are shot.

Lurie is convinced Lucy’s ambitious worker/assistant, Petrus, who was coincidentally absent during the attack, might know the assailants. But the incident drives a wedge between father and daughter. She doesn’t want to report the crime. He can’t force her, and he can’t get her to leave, although they both agree she’s not safe.

There’s a remarkable sequence midway through in which Lucy wonders whether her attackers have marked her as their territory: “They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves.”

The hitherto smug, ironic Lurie, who’s objectified women all his life, is forced to reevaluate his relationship with the traumatized Lucy. And he begins to question the foundations and relevance of his protected, ivory tower existence.

Disgrace is political without being dogmatic or reductive, yet it suggestively captures the complexity of post-apartheid life. That title takes on more meaning as the book progresses and crimes, big and small, are tallied.

What is guilt? What is innocence? Is a confession the same as being contrite? And finally, in a subplot about unwanted animals that arises with surprising delicacy and emotional richness, what is the quality of mercy?

There should be one of those button options on GR that states this review has been hidden due to hormonal, maybe not so justified, incoherent rants… click here to view

Because that’s what you’re about to get.

David Lurie is a playah. In the full urban dictionary sense of the word.

tA male who is skilled at manipulating ("playing") others, and especially at seducing women by pretending to care about them, when in reality they are only interested in sex….A certain class of low-rent, slack-jawed fuckups has decided that backstabbing and misogyny are totally radical, so the word is sometimes used as a compliment or term of endearment between male friends, as in the greeting "what's up, player?".

Maybe others got a sense of woefulness and redemption and even thought that he might have ‘learned’ from his ‘disgrace’ and all that shit. Not me. This book incited this---rage in me. Believe, I was knocked on my ass by it. My feminist instincts aren’t usually this easily inflamed. I tend to dole out my hatred in a neatly fashioned, equal rights, sort of way. So, why can’t I get over this?

Maybe I should give kudos to Coetzee for bringing this character so vividly to life---too bad I have such a hard time distinguishing him from the author. I don’t know if I can read anything else by him. I’m sort of lost in the disgust right now. I’m not saying it’s right. That’s the whole point of a rant, right? Just let it flow, man.


Was David supposed to be redeemed? Did making him a scholar, a thinker, let him off? Because he cared for his daughter as he thought a father should—is this supposed to make him a worthy person? Because he could see what he did---clearly---because he could dissect it---were we just supposed to say ‘Oh, it’s okay, he knows where his evil lies… no biggie.’

Fuck, no.

He is swarmy. He deserved everything he got. He is superficial and cares only about his legacy. He is lofty enough to believe himself to be Byronesque (don’t EVEN get me started.) Where does he get off thinking he’s doing these women a favor? He praises his daughter for being a strong woman in S. Africa, yet his first description is as follows:

t “For a moment he does not recognize here. A year has passed and she has put on weight. Her hips and breasts are now (he searches for the best word) ample.”

Then he goes on to call her ‘sturdy’—‘A solid woman, embedded in her new life.’ Does that sound like he’s praising? Sounds like a judgment to me. And not a flattering one. And then there’s ‘poor Bev Shaw’ and even his downfall, his own Teresa: “Her name is Melanie Isaacs, from his Romantics course. Not the best student but not the worst either: clever enough, but unengaged.”
Man, can he dole out the compliments.

And the whole issue of race relations? How dare he think he could pass judgment on how people like Petrus presented themselves. How dare he take offense at Petrus’s sense of what is right and wrong when he’s throwing around his own ‘lofty’ assessments of women. Get over yourself, already.

I think that his ‘disgrace’ is just a cop out. I don’t believe for one minute that he actually felt he did any wrong. He’s spineless and deserves everything he got and much much more.

Because the writing is well done, just because of that, actually. I’ll give it 3 stars… I know, I know, I should step back, appreciate the insight and all.

Screw that.

I’ve seen too many real life examples of this twat. He can go to Hell.


IMO.

Update: It's been a while since i read this book and it is still on my mind. As it succeeded to make me remember it after more than a year it means it deserves 5 stars instead of 4.

Very disturbing. I need to read something easy now. Maybe a Lee Child.

Humiliation
J.M. Coetzee's book, Disgrace, provides a few very challenging topics. The main protagonist, David Lurie, bitterly resigns his academic position at the Univerity of Cape Town after an affair with a student. The relationship ethics of teacher-student is confronted when David refuses to apologise publicly for what he considered a consensual adult relationship. What runs deeper than this misjudged affair, is David's perspective on women, and with 2 failed marriages behind him, it reveals his disrespectful and disconnected attitude towards females. Coetzee is just a marvel at how he creates a character with multiple-layered traits that show the complexity of a person as their persona swings between black and white.

David then moves to his daughter Lucy's farm, in remote South Africa during the political changes with the black population transitioning into control. During the initial period, there is a hope that David starts to rectify his behaviour and outlook on women and life. The relationship with his daughter seems to be improving from previous encounters. Life isn't going to be that simple and as a white landowner, they are attacked on their land and racial issues and personal tensions are brought to the boil again. Old problems regarding the father-daughter relationship come through and place considerable stress on the home.

The writing is wonderful as it stirs emotions, some unpleasant, disagreeable and difficult to come to terms with. This is a deep look into a character and his interactions with women, and it explores the powerful prejudices some people hold.

The imagery of South Africa is excellent and the atmosphere during that period is wonderfully drawn. I would recommend this book.

„După o anumită vîrstă, nu există decît pedeapsă” (p.194).

Menționez în grabă că am recitit acest roman sumbru fără plăcere, minunîndu-mă de psihologia contorsionată a personajelor (profesorul David Lurie de la o universitate din Cape Town și Lucy, fiica lui lesbiană). Cu siguranța că este o carte notabilă de vreme ce un conclav de savanți a estimat că e vorba de cel mai bun roman scris în engleză de un non-american, în intervalul 1980-2005. Îndrăznesc, totuși, să am o altă opinie.

În opinia mea, personajele se comportă absurd. Faptele lor contrazic toate așteptările cititorului și orice psihologie normală. Lucy e violată, dar refuză să-i acuze pe făptuitori și să anunțe poliția. Își pierde ferma și nu simte nici cel mai mic regret, cade într-un soi de somnolență. Prin resemnare, Lucy devine un personaj inert, o întruchipare a pasivității, trupul ei s-a golit de suflet. Nici David Lurie nu e mai logic. După ce are o legătură cu o studentă, Melanie Isaacs, refuză să-și ceară iertare de la părinții ei. Asta ar rezolva cazul, și-ar păstra postul. Dar profesorul e străpînit de un acces inutil de orgoliu și demisionează. Se retrage la fiica lui. Peste un timp, se răzgîndește, îi caută pe părinții fetei, îngenunchează în fața lor și le cere iertare (scena amintește de Dostoievski). E absolvit de păcat, dar asta nu-i folosește la nimic. Se întoarce la adăpostul pentru cîini, unde a cunoscut-o pe meticuloasa Bev Shaw. În acest punct, firul narativ se rupe...

Dintre toate cărțile prozatorului sud-african (locuiește acum în Australia), prefer, desigur, Așteptîndu-i pe barbari.

P. S. Într-un comentariu, am găsit această explicație pentru refuzul lui Lucy de a merge la poliție și de a-i denunța pe violatori: „Ea pare să înțeleagă ceea ce David nu poate aproba: că pentru a rămîne acolo trebuie să tolereze brutalitatea și umilirea, ca o ispășire pentru ofensele și cruzimile albilor față de negri”. Explicația nu m-a convins. Nu cred în vinovății universale.

La vergogna di David Lurie, il padre; e quella di Lucy, la figlia.
Lui è un professore universitario di mezza età, tentato di rinvigorire la sua carriera di seduttore fuori dall’aula; lei è una giovane donna che ha fatto una scelta alternativa: vivere in una fattoria di campagna, a contatto con le diverse etnie sudafricane.
È il contesto del Sudafrica post apartheid, crogiolo di contraddizioni solo apparentemente appianate.
Lo scontro tra bianchi e coloured capovolge i rapporti di forza: nell’ambiente civilizzato e protetto dell’Università di Cape town è il professor Lurie a esercitare il suo potere nei confronti della studentessa Melanie; nell’aspra periferia della provincia la situazione si capovolge e Lucy è sola a difendere caparbiamente una scelta radicale e impopolare, a trovarsi indifesa in balia della violenza.
Sarà laggiù che David, dopo l’allontanamento dall’ateneo, andrà rifugiarsi, ma anche ad affrontare un processo di consapevolezza, trasformazione e (forse) rigenerazione.
Una storia complessa che attraversa la questione delle relazioni umane senza dimenticare quelle collaterali e speculari degli uomini con i loro fratelli minori, gli animali.
L’umiliazione, il declassamento, la vergogna rappresentano un nuovo inizio soltanto per chi ha accettato l’errore e si è rialzato dopo la caduta.

Un libro denso e intenso, a tratti ostico che non fornisce risposte ma lascia aperte molte domande.

“Bisogna saper ricominciare dal fondo. Senza niente. Senza una carta da giocare, senza un’arma, senza una proprietà, senza un diritto, senza dignità.
- Come un cane.
- Sì, come un cane.”