Clearly this debut is by a fierce writer and no doubt Coetzee was on many literary fiction readers' radar after its publication. The horror of colonialism is explored through the current (for the time of publication) lens of the US involvement in the Vietnam war and the historical lens of the Boers' indigenous massacres in South Africa 300 years earlier. The book is technically two separate novellas - one a first-person account of a man losing his mind and the other diary entries of a man claiming his power - but, like his later books Elizabeth Costello and The Lives of Animals, the links between the disparate writings are thematically and politically so in tune that the sections work together to form some kind of psychanalytic whole. There's real horror found in the pages, but humour within the horror, so irony is ripe. This is one of my favourite books by Coetzee.

Coetzee's debut novel displays his flair for declarations and apt use of words. A short book consisting of two semi-related novellas, focusing on the interaction between two civilizations with unequal powers and it's impact on two individual lives. Not as powerful as his other works but still a good read.

Tierras de Poniente se publicó en 1974. Primera novela del Nobel sudafricano. Tremendo debut literario.

Esta novela contiene dos relatos con narradores protagonistas.

En el primero, Eugene Dawn, experto en psicología militar, habla de su vida personal y del ensayo que está escribiendo en la Biblioteca Harry S. Trruman, sobre la propaganda estadounidense para doblegar la resistencia vietnamita. Es un relato que gradualmente descubre los horrores de la guerra y la descomposición mental de su narrador.

En el segundo, Jacobus Coetzee, un colono boer, relata su incursión en tierras de los namaqua para cazar elefantes en 1760. Permanece cautivo y enfermo en esa tribu unos días, perdiendo animales, esclavos y pertenencias. Regresa a su hogar con la intención de volver y vengarse.

Ambos relatos dejan en evidencia los horrores de dos acontecimientos lejanos en el tiempo y en el espacio, pero unidos por la violencia desatada en pos de unos supuestos ideales civilizatorios, generados bajo el firme convencimiento de la superioridad racial, ética o sociocultural.

La maestría narrativa y el valor humanista crítico de Coetzee quedó en evidencia desde su primera publicación. Sin duda, uno de los grandes escritores contemporáneos.

Confusing

Powerful, visceral, violent, terrifying. Most frightening of all is the clear realisation evoked in the reader that the atrocious barbarity of the men depicted here lies in all our hearts. As I flinched at the vicious descriptions I flinched too at the cold knowledge that these infamous people are not so remarkable.

This novel comprises two detached narratives:

1) The first, set in California, is a 20th century narrative of Eugene Dawn, who is devising a sketch for the psychological suppression of the Vietnamese through the use of radio broadcasts with overwhelming effects on his own mind.

2) The second is an 18th century account of Jacobus Coetzee, a Dutch conquistador who ventures profoundly into the interiors of South Africa in a merciless campaign of obliteration and suppression of people and animals, a campaign of gigantic reciprocal soreness.

In this novel, there is a perceptible de-privileging of temporal progression, exemplary to narratives with historical inclinations or pretensions. Chronology is dispensed with by placing the Vietnam storyline before the Dutch storyline.

A devastating pair of novellas in the tradition of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the tale probes the links before the authoritative and the incapable. ‘Vietnam Project’ is narrated by a researcher investigating the effectiveness of the United States propaganda and psychological warfare in Vietnam.

I dont know why I had this on my list..i think I found the one flaw with goodreads...it needs a note section to tell me why I put books on here

Amid the visceral feelings of anger, shock and disgust that accompanied me throughout reading this book, oddly enough it was delirious laughter that found me when I turned the last page. I laughed for thinking Coetzee’s debut in the world of literature would be a little subdued and not as polished as his later masterpieces. Boy was I wrong. In Dusklands Coetzee confronted the unreconcilable inhuman humanity with such ruthless lucidity.

Dusklands consists of two thematically linked novellas set in different periods and at different latitudes. The first is about Eugene Dawn, a US special agent who is assigned to work on a propaganda about Vietnam War in line with the government's psychological warfare (the war in Vietnam was still going on at the time Coetzee wrote Dusklands) and the second is about a Boer frontiersman called Jacobus Coetzee who goes on an elephant hunting expedition in southern Africa during the mid-18th century. What made the book provoke a strong reaction from me is the lack of condemnation for the unjustifiable violence in it. Coetzee does not afford his readers the comfort of a character with a moral compass to anchor on. Both stories are told in first person and using a confessional tone which forces readers to view the world through their extremely distorted and narcissistic lens, and understand, as much as it’s uncomfortable, why they felt entitled to kill, rape and pillage.

There’s a lot more to consider in this slim book but what drew me in the most, in part due to the recent controversies in publishing, is that Coetzee lent his name to a secondary character in the first story and took it up several notches in the second novella by naming the antihero Jacobus after himself as a way of highlighting his ancestral complicity in colonialism. Its a lesson to *those* white authors who have an almost fetish desire to write outside their identity that sometimes you can highlight injustices with far greater impact not by inhabiting the other and making a mockery of them, but by writing close to home in the point-of-view of very flawed, very racist, very disturbing white (wo)men. But then again, not many writers are as self-aware as J.M Coetzee is.

Ador autorul acesta. Reușește sa transpună cu atâta pasiune și luciditate scene extrem de grosolane și reale.

دو داستان با درون‌مایه‌ی ضداستعماری، مثل باقی آثار کوتزی. داستان اول درباره جنگ ویتنام و داستان دوم در ارتباط با استعمار آفریقای جنوبی و قتل عام بومیان آن است. کوتزی با زیرکی نکاتی روشن‌گرانه را در متن داستان گنجانیده که شاید در حالت معمول مخاطب حوصله خواندنشان را نداشته باشد اما در قالب داستان جذاب و خواندنی شده‌اند. انتخاب دو ضدقهرمان به عنوان راوی به جذابیت داستان افزوده است، بخصوص زمانی‌که روایت شکل حدیث نفس پیدا می کند

Very powerful. To think that this was J. M. Coetzee's first novel.

This is my 4th book by him. Last year, I read his The Life and Times of Michael K, Disgrace and Slowman. Despite the Booker awards he got in the first two book, there were times I wondered how he was able to get his Nobel Prize for Literature. Michael K barely has anything on racism as it only touches on military involvement due to racial segregation with Michael K and his mother fleeing the city. Disgrace is about a professor asked to resign due to his affair with his student. Slowman is about this bicycleman who had an accident on the street.

So Duskland must be one of the reasons for J. M. Coetzee winning his Nobel.

It is composed of two stories about the complexity brought about by more powerful countries colonizing or taking over smaller or poorer countries. The first story is about Eugene Dawn, who is assigned to work on a propaganda about Vietnam War in line with the government's psychological warfare. Part of his job is to write articles or reports containing several pictures taken from the on-going war. Those pictures are themselves too disturbing and could speak for the horrors not of the war itself but by one race, not necessarily superior, trying to impose itself upon another. J. M. Coetzee brilliantly used Dawn to illustrate how wrong it is for the U.S. to think of itself as a nation whose values and practices are all good and must be copied anywhere in the world. The tragedies that he befell into later in the story are too sad for the message to be missed by the readers.

The second story is about Jacobus Coetzee and it is set in the 18th century and this time, not in Asia but in Africa. This reminds me of Charles Marlow in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Both of their stories are dark and sad. The only difference is that Conrad's prose is lyrical while J. M. Coetzee's is direct, hard-hitting and appeared like a non-fiction work because of the footnotes and the full research that he spent in writing Jacobus Coetzee's travel-like diary is astounding. Jacobus Coetzee's fate is similar to that of Eugene Dawn. He was thrown out from the tribe that at first welcomed him making him realized the evil of colonizing a race whose culture and beliefs were totally different from his own. Then J. M. Coetzee put that final twist making the story totally different from that of Conrad's.

Now, not an iota of doubt that Coetzee deserved his Nobel.

جان مکسول کوتزی نویسنده ی آفریقایی هلندی و برنده ی جایزه نوبل سال 2003 است. کوتزی را در واقع نویسنده ی سبک پسااستعماری میدانند.
کتاب سرزمین های گرگ و میش شامل دو داستان است. در این دو داستان کوتزی به نقد استعمارگری و مستعمره بودن میپردازد. داستان اول کتاب یعنی
پروژه ی ویتنام، در واقع به شرح فروپاشی روانی یک کارمند بخش جنگ روانی امریکا در زمان جنگ ویتنام میپردازد. داستان دوم یعنی حکایت یاکوبوس کوتزی، درباره ی یک شکارچی فیل است که به سرزمین های ناشناخته ی افریقا میرود و در انجا در یک قبیله ی تقریبا بدوی گرفتار شده و به بیماری سختی دچار میشود. و پس از بهبود مجبور به بازگشت بدون هیچ وسیله ای میشود چرا که همه ی وسایلش را غارت کرده اند. کوتزی از این ماجرا جان سالم به در میبرد و پس از مدتی با افرادی به آن روستا برگشته و انتقام میگیرد.

قسمت های زیادی از کتاب سانسور شده بود و تنها خوبی این کتاب این بود که کتاب چاپ 1388 بود و قسمت های سانسور شده را با [...] نشان داده بودند تا خواننده متوجه شود که قسمتی حذف شده. که این موضوع در کتابهای چاپ جدید نیست و اکثرا اجازه ندارند نشانه ای بگذارند تا حداقل خواننده ی بینوا بفهمد کتاب زیر تیغ سانسور چقدر شرحه شرحه شده.

نکته بعدی اینکه این کتاب از "سری رمان های فرودستان" شماره 1 بود. و من این کتاب را در کتابخانه دانشگاه پیدا کردم و تا به حال متاسفانه در کتابفروشی ای این کتاب را ندیده ام. حال سوال این است که نشر بیدگل شماره های دیگری از این سری را منتشر کرده است یا خیر؟