Disgrace

After an impulsive affair with his student sours, David Lurie retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. He and Lucy become victims of a disturbing attack which brings into relief all their faultlines.

"The richness of Disgrace lies in the elegant and allegorical role reversals, the spare symbolism of the language and in the characterization. We may not like David Lurie, but in Coetzee's skillful hands we can't dismiss him without pity." --The Globe and Mail.

"Coetzee is able to dissect the human psyche with a surgeon's touch." - The Hamilton Spectator "Marvellous." - The National Post "Disgraceis a subtle, multilayered story, as much concerned with politics as it is with the itch of male flesh. Coetzee's prose is chaste and lyrical - it is a relief to encounter writing as quietly stylish as this." - Independent "Disgraceis at the frontier of world literature." - Sunday Telegraph "J.M. Coetzee's vision goes to the nerve-centre of being. What he finds there is more than most people will ever know about themselves, and he conveys it with a brilliant writer's mastery of tension and elegance." - Nadine Gordimer