Hace unos días vi una muy recomendable película titulada The Report. En ella se cuenta la historia de la redacción del informe que el Senado estadounidense realizó sobre el programa de "Interrogación y Detención" de la CIA tras el 11-S. En dicho informe se hizo constar que unos psicólogos sin experiencia en interrogatorios ni en terrorismo idearon un protocolo de interrogatorio basado en la tortura. Las premisas de dicho protocolo coinciden con las del personaje de la novela de Coetzee (1980), el Coronel Joll:

n   “… una situación en la que investigo para dar con la verdad, en la que tengo que presionar para encontrarla. Al principio solo obtengo mentiras, así es, primero solo mentiras, entonces hay que presionar; después más mentiras, entonces hay que presionar más; luego el desmoronamiento, tras este seguimos presionando, y por fin la verdad. Así es como se obtiene la verdad.” n

Los interrogatorios de la CIA, de la misma forma que los de la novela, fueron del todo ineficaces, y en ambos casos consta que los interrogados terminaban confesando, si es que contaban algo, cualquier cosa con tal de detener la tortura, con el consiguiente y posterior consumo de recursos en la comprobación y seguimiento de las pistas falsas. Lo más terrible de todo, si es que algo puede ser más terrible, es que informes parecidos realizados con anterioridad habían llegado a las mismas conclusiones y no se tuvieron en cuenta. Los psicólogos se embolsaron 81 millones de dólares por el asesoramiento.

Uno llega a preguntarse si un elemento esencial de estos bárbaros interrogatorios no es otro que el placer que los torturadores obtienen de los mismos, algo que también insinúa Coetzee en su novela.

n   “Al observarle me pregunto qué sentiría la primera vez que lo invitaron como aprendiz a retorcer los alicates o apretar las tuercas o hacer lo que tengan por costumbre: ¿se estremeció siquiera ligeramente al saber que en ese mismo instante estaba traspasando el límite de lo prohibido?” n

Otro punto importante que aborda Coetzee es la utilización del miedo como arma del Poder para su subsistencia, un miedo que infunde directamente mediante la represión e indirectamente mediante la demonización de un supuesto enemigo exterior, que ni siquiera tiene por qué existir o ser una amenaza, y para el cual ellos se reivindican como la única protección posible.

n   “No existe a lo largo de la frontera mujer que no haya visto en sueños la mano morena de un bárbaro surgiendo bajo su cama para agarrarle el tobillo. Ni tampoco hombre que no se haya atemorizado con visiones de los bárbaros celebrando orgías en su hogar, rompiendo los platos, incendiando las cortinas y violando a sus hijas.” n

Y paralelamente a todo ello, están las reflexiones de un miembro civil de ese poder, un miembro bien intencionado, amable, que se enfrenta a la dura represión del ejército y que termina siendo consciente de su antigua participación en el juego del poder.

n   “Yo era la mentira que un Imperio se cuenta a sí mismo en los buenos tiempos, él la verdad que un Imperio cuenta cuando corren malos vientos. Dos caras de la dominación imperial, ni más ni menos.” n

Un magistrado que es testigo de los injustos desmanes que comete el poder y al que tarda en enfrentarse, con el consiguiente sentimiento de culpa, para terminar sufriéndolo en sus propias carnes.

n   “Desde entonces nunca volvió a ser enteramente humana, dejó de ser hermana de todos nosotros. Se rompieron ciertos vínculos, su corazón no pudo volver a abrigar ciertos sentimientos. Yo también, si vivo lo bastante en esta celda con los espíritus no sólo del padre y de la hija sino además con los del hombre que ni siquiera a la luz de la lámpara se quitaba sus discos negros de los ojos y del subordinado cuyo trabajo consistía en mantener la parrilla encendida, me contagiaré y me convertiré en un ser que no cree en nada.” n

Toda esta reflexión está realmente bien, con momentos de gran dramatismo que se leen sin respirar. Pero después hay otra parte de la novela, bastante extensa, con cavilaciones sobre el deseo, la vejez, las cosas importantes de la vida…, muy al margen de todo lo anterior, que se me hicieron pesadas. Tampoco me gustó como concluye la historia y el optimismo que ella refleja, ni el buenismo excesivo de esa declaración del protagonista, “Creo en la paz, y tal vez incluso en la paz a cualquier precio”, que es justo la actitud que el poder necesita y a la que le puede poner un precio demasiado alto.

What a powerful piece of prose! The main character is an anti-hero, a magistrate in an outpost of an Empire; he's been there for twenty years and has elapsed into a kind of routine. But then suddenly an army-kolonel turns up who wants to combat the barbarians at the other side of the frontier. The magistrate registers the sudden indications of torture and injustice, does not understand why simple nomads are declared enemies; his fascination focusses especially on a blind and cripple nomad-girl. Of course it doesn't end well, but the end is kept open.

In this novel Coetzee immediately dives very deep into the human soul; putting the struggle for humanity and civilisation against the "barbaric" attitude of the military; but it is not a black-and-white-picture (although Coetzee flirts with the theme of the noble savage); even the magistrate knows very well he too personifies some dark aspects of civilization.

Looking at the year of publication (1980) there's a temptation to think of this novel as a work of resistance against the South African apartheidsregime; this kind of reading certainly is relevant, but Coetzee has superseded this specific context and brings a broader humanistic story: how thin is the line between civilization and barbarism!

Also from a stylistic point of view, this is great literature. The description of the torture and humiliation of the magistrate focusses on the bodily deterioration, and reminds me of Yourcenar's "L'Œuvre au noir; and then of course the setting (a garnison's town near a desert) inevitably calls into memory Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe. Captivating reading and a ever so relevant warning! (3.5 stars)

I’d be lying if I told you this was an overly exciting book, but nevertheless Coetzee paints a fascinating portrait of civilization with nothing but a small village for his setting. Here we see civilization in all its ridiculousness, tedium, decadence, and cruelty. Anyone who thinks that wars and acts of conquest are a noble or black and white affair should read this, and I would hope it changes their minds.

این رمان که در سال 1980 منتشر شد، داستان شهری مرزی را در یک امپراطوری بی‌نام به تصویر می‌کشد. شهری که ناگهان، ساکنانش دچار ترسی بیمارگونه از بربرها می‌شوند. استعمارگران تا بن دندان مسلح برای جنگ با این بربرهای احتمالی مهیای پیکار می‌شوند و سرهنگ جول، از طرف امپراطوری برای این سرکوب، فرماندهی دسته را به عهده می‌گیرد.
شهردار پیر که سال‌ها با اهالی مرزی زندگی کرده، می‌داند، آنان که حکومت، بربر، خطابشان می‌کند، کم آزارتر از اهالی متمدن امپراطوری هستند و اگر خشونت یا خیانتی بوده، همواره از سوی مقابل بوده اما فهماندن چنین مطلبی به سربازان امپراطوری که برای سرکوب آمده‌اند، دشوار است. شهردار در پاسخ به پرسش سرهنگ در مورد بربرها می‌گوید:" بروید سر بساطی‌ها تا ببینید سر کی ها را کلاه می‌گذارند و به شان کم می‌فروشند و سرشان داد می‌زنند و خوار و زارشان می‌کنند. ببینید کی ها از ترس این که مبادا سربازها به زن هاشان بد و بی راه بگویند آن‌ها را توی اردوگاه می‌گذارند و با خودشان نمی‌آورند... من شهردار می‌بایست بیست سال آزگار با همین خواری و خفتی که هر نوکر بی سر و پایی یا کشاورز دهاتی‌ای به سر آن‌ها می‌آورد دست وپنجه نرم کنم. تحقیر را چه جور می‌شود از یاد برد به خصوص این که به خاطر هیچ و پوچی مثل تفاوت آداب سر سفره و آرایش پشت چشم باشد؟ می‌خواهید بدانید بعضی وقت‌ها من چه آرزویی می‌کنم؟ آرزو می‌کنم این بربرها پا شوند و حق ما را کف دستمان بگذارند تا یاد بگیریم به شان احترام بگذاریم."
شهردار در تلاش برای فهماندن اینکه بربرها بی آزارند، شغلش را از دست می‌دهد، زندانی می‌شود و حتی تا پای چوبه‌ی دار هم می‌رود، البته نه مثل قهرمانهای کلاسیک. چون روش شکنجه هم دیگر مثل سابق نیست. سرهنگ جول برای خراب کردن چهره‌ی شهردار نزد اهالی منطقه،
او را در شرایطی بسیار ابتدایی از لحاظ امکانات نگه می‌دارد. شهردار دسترسی به حمام ندارد. لباس‌هایش کثیف است و بوی نامطبوعی همواره همراه اوست. این فرد، شباهتی به قهرمانان کلاسیک ندارد و سرهنگ تصور می‌کند مردم هم به خاطر ظاهر شهردار، به سخنانش وقعی نمی‌نهند.
در این رمان، کوئتزی چهره‌ی فردی را به تصویر کشیده که درگیر ابتدایی‌ترین نیازهای انسانی‌اش است. او نه آنقدر مقدس است که بتواند غرایزش را در مقابل زنان کنترل کند و نه بدنی با نیروی فوق انسانی دارد تا در مقابل شکنجه دوام آورد.
با اینکه در پایان شهردار موفق نمی‌شود حرفش را به سرهنگ جول و سربازها بفهماند اما اهالی شهر، بعد از شکنجه‌های وحشیانه‌ی بربرها و تصور انتقام متقابل، به این فهم رسیده‌اند که حرف شهردار درست بود و به نظر می‌رسد پرسشی که شهردار تلاش می‌کرد در ذهن اهالی ایجاد کند، به وجود آمده باشد. بربرهای واقعی چه کسانی هستند؟ ما یا دیگری؟ حالا یک بیم قلب شهردار را می‌فشارد: این حقیقیت که "تماشای بی رحمی، آدم‌های بی گناه را فاسدمی کند." پس باید" فقط دعا کنیم که آن‌ها (کودکانمان) بازی‌های بزرگ ترهاشان را تقلید نکنند.
"Chok"

"I should never have allowed the gates of the town to be opened to people who assert that there are higher considerations than those of decency."

Perhaps an epitaph for our world. If you like your Kafka with a large dose of morality in it, step this way. I wonder if there has ever been a period in human history in which this little work would not have its place however particularly apt it may seem right now.

This is the third Coetzee I've read now and all of them are economic in terms of paper spent, this one a mere 170 pages. And yet there is nothing in the prose to indicate a miserly attitude to words or to story line. Indeed, there is much wonderment in the book.

Nor could I always see why one part of my body, with its unreasonable cravings and false promises, should be heeded over any other as a channel of desire. Sometimes my sex seemed to me another being entirely, a stupid animal living parasitically upon me, swelling and dwindling according to autonomous appetites, anchored to my flesh with claws I could not detach. Why do I have to carry you about from woman to woman, I asked: simply because you were born without legs? Would it make any difference to you if you were rooted in a cat or dog instead of in me?

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpre...

Written in 1980, Coetzee's meditation on the power of the state, and how it uses fear of the other to maintain power, is a reflection of his experience of apartheid government in his native South Africa, but it is also a timeless story. It is set in a fictional Empire at an outpost where the Barbarians are nearby, but are rarely seen; this could be the 19th Century American West, or similar periods in Mexico, or the steppes of Russia. My personal candidate location is the area around the Caspian Sea, based on a few clues in the text, but it really doesn't matter; the story is a parable.

As in Disgrace, Coetzee's protagonist is an aging man, fifty-something; in Disgrace the protagonist was a womanizing professor whose philandering with students is his downfall; in Waiting for the Barbarians he is the magistrate of an outpost town on the fringes of the Empire who falls from grace because of his infatuation with a younger woman. But in this story, the woman is a left-behind barbarian, permanently damaged by torture. The "security forces" have come to the outpost to investigate reports of nascent unrest and anti-Empire organizing by the barbarians, and they seek "evidence" by capturing and torturing a group of wandering nomads. Coetzee looks deeply into how power, or at least a certain kind of power, requires enemies, and how torture is rarely about seeking information, but about demonstrating a government's power to intimidate. The book is also about how aging men need younger women to re-affirm their masculinity, and how that pairing often makes them ridiculous, and sometimes destroys them. This is a short book with a powerful message that resonates with me.

It is impossible as an American to read this book, which was written in 1980 by a South African author, and not think of what the forces of the United States did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Torture was sanctioned by the Bush Administration, and it is a source of shame that the CIA put us in the same league as the authoritarian nations of the world in embracing torture. Coetzee makes a moral case against torture, but also explores how all of us are made complicit in our government's acts.

I have given this four stars instead of five, only because Coetzee pontificates a little bit past the necessary point in some cases, but generally the story is told in compelling tones, and it moves forward briskly.

"They do not care that once the ground is cleared the wind begins to eat at the soil and the desert advances. Thus the expeditionary force against the barbarians prepared for its campaign, ravaging the earth, wasting our patrimony."

Is this--my 5th one read--THE quintessential Coetzee? (I may or not be nodding my head.)

Earlier than "Life & Times of Micheal K.", it is here that we see the true beginnings of Coetzee's motifs, as well as the accomplished writer's poetics. A man whose fortune is reversed; a war-torn stage; a modern Holocaust; sadistic regimes. "Waiting for the Barbarians" is the Schindler legend reproduced: it evokes the same tension of living lives in a death camp, all the while keeping the First Person POV pulsating with life, afire, though always dwindling between morality and evil, between life & death.

Not so strange that of "Waiting for the Barbarians" Graham Greene wrote "A remarkable & original book." His spectacular "The Quiet American", also a novella robust with pathos and adventure, is emulated here as the Magistrate, torn apart over his conscience and his duties to the Empire, finds solace in one of the enemy. Because the voice of the protagonist is so damn credible, full of contradictions and deep thoughts it is that verisimilitude is fully achieved. We get both a man in complete "Hamlet" gear (perhaps as ill equipped as Coetzee's Slow Man, or his doe-eyed, hare-lipped Michael K. to the ravishes of a deeply-apathetic world) & a lesson in (far-flung, private, hidden) history.

It's pretty obvious to see why this deserves a very-coveted place in the canon, in literature. Here: a prime example of Post Colonial Lit. And also, let's not forget, a prime reason Coetzee got his Nobel Prize.

4.5 Stars.

A very complex, intricate book written by the masterful J.M. Coetzee.

We are in a nameless country, in an unknown time with a nameless narrator (the Magistrate) who is our eyes into this world that is about to be completely upended by the arrival of Commandant Joll, from the Empire headquarters.

There are rumours that their is unrest among the Barbarians (nomads living at the outskirts of the Empire) and that they are planning an attack.
The Commandant believes in torturing his victims. The Magistrate, a peaceful man, is absolutely repulsed by this, but can do nothing to stop it.

“It would be best if this obscure chapter in the history of the world were terminated at once, if these ugly people were obliterated from the face of the earth and we swore to make a new start, to run an empire in which there would be no more injustice, no more pain.”

The Magistrate decides to take a stand and stand up for the Barbarians. He is imprisoned for going against the Empire.

“I am aware of the source of my elation: my alliance with the guardians of the Empire is over, I have set myself in opposition, the bond is broken, I am a freeman.”

This book was frightening to me- to see how easily people can be turned against a group just because the Empire is demanding it. Who really are the Barbarians- the outsiders or the people who feel they have the right and the power to do as they please? In this world, the women have no power, other that they are used for their bodies. The Magistrate is older and very obsessed with his fading sexuality. Is Coetzee trying to use this as the Magistrate feeling impotent for his lot in life or is it simply a judgement on aging ?

So many important themes running through this short 170 page book. When I first started it, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get into it. But get into it, I most certainly did.
This book is definitely an allegory for our world. Coetzee has a brilliant far reaching mind and he is a master of words.
The title of this book shares its title with a Cavafy poem that ends “ Those people were a kind of solution”

Recommended, but not an easy read.
Apparently, there is a movie of this novel. If anyone has seen it, please let me know if it’s worthwhile.

PUBLISHED: 1980

Confini dell'Impero, confini della Giustizia o confini dell'essere uomo?

Un magistrato non più giovane è responsabile dell'amministrazione della Giustizia in una terra di confine di un luogo non contestualizzato. In realtà quest'uomo incarna e rappresenta il Potere e le Istituzioni di un Terzo Impero non meglio definito.

Il magistrato, dopo anni di tranquillo e benevolo esercizio, in cui ha cercato di entrare in contatto con ciò che è stata la Storia della terra e del popolo che si trova a gestire, si scontra coi metodi bruti di gestione del Potere.

Una spedizione punitiva nei confronti del popolo autoctono (barbari) condotta da un acerrimo comandante investito dallo stesso Impero che ha incaricato il magistrato dei propri compiti, utilizza i mezzi più efferati di tortura e si fa vanto dello sfregio e della umiliazione.
L'Impero ha la necessità di trattare il diverso come nemico per dimostrare il proprio Potere, poiché l'Impero per affemarsi e per rinsaldare i propri confini ha bisogno di un nemico da combattere, di sangue da versare.

Il magistrato, profondamente scosso dal comportamento insensato e privo di reale motivazione dei colleghi istituzionali, si pone, per reazione, come il più umile dei servi di fronte alla diversità del barbaro riconoscendone l'ingiusta tortura e la mancanza di colpa.

Accoglie in casa propria una giovane barbara oggetto di sevizie da parte dei nuovi mandanti dell'impero, si inchina di fronte a lei in quanto rappresentazione e oggetto di crudeltà ingiustificata e compie nei suoi confronti gesti di profonda devozione e rispetto.

Il lavaggio dei piedi spezzati, il trattamento di quel corpo storpiato con oli profumati, l'impossibilità di possesso fisico della stessa, simboleggiano per il giudice la necessità di richiesta di perdono, la necessità di ricompensa di chi ha subito un trattamento crudele e spietato e, per contro, la difficoltà dell'amore per il diverso da sé.

Il magistrato coglie e interpreta il dovere di essere uomo e non bestia, riconosce il fratello nel diverso e, anche se fatica ad amarlo ed accettarlo, cerca di vivere in pace con esso, cerca di trattarlo con rispetto e tolleranza.

Ma questo comportamento porta il magistrato ad essere trattato dal Potere costituito come l'ultimo dei nemici perché considerato amico dei barbari. Lo porta a vivere incarcerato in uno stato aberrante e quasi animalesco, in cui nonostante la vergogna e le umiliazioni subite, saranno gli istinti di sopravvivenza a prevalere.

Ma chi sa, o meglio, chi è consapevole (il giudice un simbolo per tutti, un'astrazione), non può far finta di non vedere, non può non ribellarsi, non può essere connivente.

"So troppo. E da questo sapere, una volta che ne sei contagiato, non c'è scampo. Non avrei mai dovuto prendere quella lanterna per andare a vedere cosa succedeva nella baracca vicino al granaio. D'altra parte era impossibile, una volta presa quella lanterna, metterla giù."

E non importa se la ribellione provocherà le più terribili umiliazioni, e porterà alla condizione più infima e misera, perché l'importante, per chi conserva la memoria della giustizia con cui ciascuno di noi nasce, è "che alla fine si dica, se mai in un futuro lontano qualcuno si dovesse interessare a noi, si dica che in questo remoto avamposto dell'Impero di luce è esistito un uomo che, nel profondo del cuore, non era un barbaro".

Un romanzo che pone tantissime domande su temi fondamentali quali Potere, Giustizia, Diversità, eterni confini della dimensione umana. Il vero barbaro chi è? Le barbarie più efferate chi le compie? Chi è più consapevole può sottrarsi davanti ad un esercizio ingiusto di Potere?

Un romanzo simbolico, intenso, terribile e bellissimo.
Una penna quella di Coetzee acuminata e brutale ma sicuramente illuminata.

It is impossible to read this and not be reminded of an almost genetically programmed inferiority complex, the burden of history only the descendants of the colonized have to bear. Despite those smug pronouncements of the 21st century being an era of a fair and equitable world and the hard battles won in favor of interracial harmony, there's the fact of your friend barely suppressing a squawk of alarm when you express your admiration for Idris Elba - no female I am acquainted with in real life has learned to wean herself away from the fixation with a white complexion. Scrub your skin raw till it bleeds but never fall behind in the race to make it whiter because that's the color the world approves of. You can fawn over Simon Baker's blonde, light-eyed glory but not over Elba's hulking, ruggedly handsome perfection; heaven forbid you prefer the latter over the former. The 21st century is yet to cast its magic spell over the standards of physical beauty.

So if I, a citizen of a purportedly newer and better social order, can still feel the rippling aftershocks of the catastrophe called Imperialism from across the barrier of decades and centuries, what would a man like Coetzee have experienced, stranded in the middle of the suffocating sociopolitical stasis of Apartheid? Moral anguish? A bitter impotence? A premonitory sense of doom? Anger?

Fiction, I believe, must have been his preferred method of exorcizing these demons. And purge these emotions he did through the composition of this slim little novel which can be aptly described as a most heart-wrenching lament on the condition of the world of his times.

n  It may be true that the world as it stands is no illusion, no evil dream of a night. It may be that we wake up to it ineluctably, that we can neither forget it nor dispense with it. But I find it as hard as ever to believe that the end is near.n

An anonymous magistrate stationed at a farthest corner of an unspecified Empire witnesses the death throes of its reign while recovering his own humanity at the loss of his position of power and influence. In the beginning he is convinced of his righteousness as a dutiful servant of the Empire who oversees the welfare his subjects with moderation but with the arrival of a bluntly tyrannical figure of authority whose methods differ vastly from his, he begins to question his own collusion in the maintenance of an unnatural order. Unable to stand as a mute witness to the horrendous abuse inflicted on innocent 'natives' on the false suspicion of their complicity with 'barbarians' or armed rebels who threaten the stability of the Empire, he clashes with the aforementioned administrator who undoubtedly represents the true face of any oppressor when divested of its sheen of sophistication. And thus begins his fall from grace culminating in a kind of metaphorical rebirth through extreme physical abasement.

n  I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy, he the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow. Two sides of imperial rule, no more, no less.n

In the fashion of Coetzee's signature didacticism the novel is rife with allegorical implications but as much as these can be deeply thought-provoking, sometimes they also resemble conveniently inserted contrivances. Like the pseudo-erotic entanglement that develops between the ageing magistrate and a young 'barbarian' girl who is left maimed and partially blinded after a violent bout of interrogation is amply demonstrative of a colonizer-colonized arrangement - the one bereft of power to drive the relationship in a desired direction becomes dependent on the volatile benevolence of the other party. Or the mounting paranoia about the anticipated attack of the 'barbarians' who, much like Godot, fail to appear and remain a myth till the end although emerging as the key factor hastening the impending demise of Empire. All the layers of meaning and symbolism could send a dedicated literature student into paroxysms of pleasure no doubt.

n  With the buck before me suspended in immobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to turn my gaze inward and see what it is that has robbed the hunt of its savour: the sense that this has become no longer a morning's hunting but an occasion on which either the proud ram bleeds to death on the ice or the old hunter misses his aim; that for the duration of its frozen moment the stars are locked in a configuration in which events are not themselves but stand for other things.n

Wary as I am of Coetzee's often stilted world-building, my 5-star rating was an inevitability given my obsession with narratives containing a discernible vein of literary activism in harmony with notions of social justice. Here he also seems to have successfully reined in his pesky habit of turning his characters into sockpuppet-ish mouthpieces to tout his own passage-length worldviews. The narrator does occasionally morph into a pedagogue but his inner monologues never seem out of place given his unique circumstances. Besides it takes courage to acknowledge the fact of white man's guilt in a world which is yet to discard the rhetoric of 'white man's burden'.

A novel as thin and tight and sharp as razor wire. WFTB was an allegorical nightmare filled with both moral clarity and an intense and heavy sadness. It is interesting to read this at the same time as The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire. It also reminds me again and again of Mayer's fantastic book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. How can Coetzee have written so clearly in 1980 about our modern culture of torture, Empire, degradation and fear? Again, just an amazing book.

After the shock of the recent Paris attacks I don’t know precisely why it made me recall  Coetzee’s  Waiting for the Barbarians that I read a few years ago. Yesterday it was a terrorist attack and perhaps no direct result of imperialism, but maybe the fears that the recent events provoked in me are somewhat akin to those suffered in this tiny frontier settlement with the arrival of interrogation experts. Today we don’t know how to defend ourselves against such tragedy, how can we escape or where next will it hit? As we feel its aftershocks how can we not taste the same bitter impotence of those stranded in other periods of darkness that derive simply from the worst parts of human nature; or how can we not feel a premonition of doom that there is not much that can be done.

Waiting for the Barbarians is superb and a relatively easy book to read despite its deeper meanings. Coetzee states simply n  “Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.”n He is probably right.

There is much more in this brief 150 pages book:

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n    “You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know." I had no doubt, myself, then, that at each moment each one of us, man, woman, child, perhaps even the poor old horse turning the mill-wheel, knew what was just: all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. "But we live in a world of laws," I said to my poor prisoner, "a world of the second-best. There is nothing we can do about that. We are fallen creatures. All we can do is to uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade.”n  

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Not much more that I can say… Just read Waiting for the Barbarians, and appreciate Coetzee at his best.
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