LiteratureBook · 1980
Waiting for the Barbarians
J.M. Coetzee
An unnamed magistrate runs a quiet frontier town for an unnamed Empire until Colonel Joll arrives with a special forces unit, declares an emergency and begins torturing captured barbarians. The magistrate takes in one of the tortured women, escorts her back to her people, and is arrested and broken himself on his return. The barbarians never come.
Why you should read this
An allegorical novel that never names its empire or its enemy, which is the point: it reads as commentary on colonial power in general rather than on any one historical regime. It is bleaker and more overtly political than most of Coetzee's other early fiction, without needing specific historical markers to make its case.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Fiction
- Published
- 1980
- Themes
- South African LiteratureLiterature
