Every attempt he makes with Lucy, in particular, only furthers her suffering. He is at least somewhat aware of his own failings, but seemingly powerless to do anything about them. It’s a provocative novel, in that David’s perspective is the only one we hear, and he is emphatically an awful person but he speaks in Coetzee’s alarmingly compelling prose. To me, it never felt like it was preaching or over-simplifying any of these issues. It’s tackling massive themes around race relations in South Africa, life and death, father-daughter relationships, aging, and the terrifying truths of maleness. It’s a novel whose morals and messages are impossible to reduce to simple summaries. The writing is supremely well-crafted and minimal, with not a word going to waste. It’s unflinchingly honest, and incredibly lucid. This is an astonishing novel, in so many ways.

David becomes increasingly estranged from his former life, from his daughter, and ultimately from the modern world, seeking solace in his attempts to write an opera about Byron, and less predictably, in disposing of euthanised dogs as a help to Bev Shaw, a friend of his daughter’s.

He loses everything following his pursuit and eventual rape of a young female student, and subsequent refusal to co-operate with an enquiry that seems designed to protect him.ĭavid moves to the country to visit his daughter, Lucy, which initially seems to offer respite, before Lucy’s world is shattered by a shockingly violent attack and rape by three young black men, who also try to kill David and shoot several of the farm’s dogs. The first half of the novel details Lurie’s life as an aging academic and Byron obsessive, satisfying himself with weekly visits to prostitutes. He was one of a small number of prominent white South African authors to overtly criticize Apartheid, and has a history of protest dating back to anti-Vietnam war protests and continuing through recent involvement in animal rights issues.ĭisgrace is told from the perspective of David Lurie, a divorced literature professor at a university in post-Apartheid Cape Town. Something of a polymath, he studied English before working as a computer programmer for IBM in London, and managed to combine the two by completing a computer-aided analysis of the language of Beckett for his doctoral thesis while in the US on a Fulbright scholarship. A much-awarded novelist, with accolades including the Nobel Prize for Literature, he was the first author to win the Booker twice ( in the chronological sense, at least) - with 1983’s Life and Times of Michael K taking the honours back in 1983.

John Maxwell Coetzee (1940- active 1974-), born Cape Town, South Africa.

Disgrace david lurie