LiteratureBook · 1999
Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee
David Lurie, a twice divorced literature professor in Cape Town, is forced out of his job after an affair with a student and takes refuge on his daughter Lucy's smallholding in the Eastern Cape, where three men attack them both. Coetzee gives you a man who will not apologise and a daughter who will not report what was done to her, and refuses to reconcile the two. It won the Booker Prize in 1999.
Why you should read this
This is the novel that made Coetzee the first author to win the Booker twice, a spare account of institutional and personal disgrace in post-apartheid South Africa. It offers no redemptive arc and no moral cushioning, and suits readers who want difficult material handled without sentimentality.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Fiction
- Published
- 1999
- Themes
- South African LiteratureLiterature
