About this title: In South Africa after apartheid, a middle-aged professor of Romantic poetry sees his career crumble as the world turns more to technology than to literature. After a series of ever more degrading misadventures, including a charge of sexual harassment, he ends up on his daughter's farm. There, after further disgraces--his daughter is raped and he ...
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Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780140296402ISBN:0140296409
Description: Good. Back/ Front cover is folded. Well used. Still readable but not for the collector. All orders processed within 2 business days. Ships from Foxboro MA. read more
Description: Good. Book shows wear to cover edges and spine. Marks/spots on cover. Corners bent/rounded. Otherwise in good reading condition. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Date Published: 2005-09-06
ISBN-13:9780143036371ISBN:0143036378
Description: Very good. Very minimal damage to the cover (no holes or tears, only minimal scuff marks), in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, minimal to no highlighting/under. read more
"I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. I feel a little baited and switched. I read the book enticed by the scandal which opens the first few chapters. I liked the premise of an aging professor dealing with the loss of his youthful looks and career, however still feel lust and desire which begs to be satisfied. Although I find the main character, David Lurie a bit irritating especially when he refuses to take any responsibility for the seduction of his young student ("I am subject to Eros"), I refrain from moral judgement since I just don't find his crime that terribly offensive. What still sits uneasy with me is the author's subtle symbolism of the two major crimes that take place in the book to race relations in post-apartheid South Africa. Unless it's an allegory of sort, its symbolism is lost on me. Perhaps I'm too desensitized, but the latter crime does not even shock me. The crime is reminiscent of what takes place in *The Prince of Tides*, but unlike Tides, Lurie's daughter, Lucy, almost deals with the aftermath of the tragedy in an ideological fashion which seems unbelievable. From a human psychological perspective, it just seems too unreal. Maybe the movie will give me better insight, but for now, this book is a bit too obtuse for my taste."
"Coetzee is at the top of English fiction writing today. This a book about losing our path amidst the ruthlessness of class and racial tensions after apartheid. It is gripping yet subtly laid out, the plot depicts the inability of ordinary morality in a new conflicted and resentful world. Flesh tearing, this book is must for those caught up in the riddles of multi-racial communities where moral tenets have yet found a proper place. A must for those who are begining to realize our impotence to overcome social splits and are amenable to spend a sleepless night in fear and wondering...."
"Everything has a price. If you're a university professor getting involved with a student who later reports you, you pay the price: you're dismissed and your life is turned upside down. If you're a young white woman and choose not to leave the ground you were born on (i.e. South Africa), you pay the price: you get robbed, raped and learn how to cope with the situation.
"   This book made me want to read Twilight. Yes, Twilight: perfectly perfect young people falling in love and never growing old. God, I hope that's what's in store for me there. I need an antidote to Disgrace.    It affected me more than I thought it could, in ways I hadn't imagined possible. At page ten I would have readily given it five stars; the writing is superb. Halfway through I'd have given it four. Excellent, but slightly annoying. At the moment I finished it, shouting "WHAT?? What the hell kind of ending is THAT???" and wondering if I was going into shock, I'd have demanded stars back for ruining my life. A little distance was needed before I could consider it rationally again.
   The word disgrace is what struck me with nearly every page. Coetzee's writing is like that. Tight. There's no escaping what he wants you to see. It's not outrageously blatant, but it's none too subtle either. It's good. So good you might be tempted to revel in it. Do not. This is not for the faint-hearted. Run. Read something easy, something happy. Anything. If you stay Coetzee will turn that word, disgrace, in your mind a hundred different ways. I'm no stranger to the word. I have been a disgrace, been disgraced, disgraced myself and others. Seriously. I thought I was immune to it.    The main character, David Lurie, is disgraced. Big deal. He disgraces a student. Yeah, I'm familiar with that. She'll live. He is a disgrace. Yes, clearly. David Lurie is entering the disgrace of growing old. That's where Coetzee has me.    I can't find it in me to despise Lurie. He's a Lothario and possibly worse ("She does not own herself. Beauty does not own itself."), but I don't have to live with him. Then there's the sharp intelligence with too little empathy or emotion to make it truly sing. The bare objectiveness. He claims to have lost 'the lyrical' within himself, but it's doubtful he ever had it. He's a pretender. I'm amused by the fact that he, a professor of language, begins the affair that causes his public fall from grace by quoting Shakespeare's first sonnet. The words apply as much to himself as to anyone. But self-delusion is my own stock-in-trade. I can't condemn him for that. I don't love him either. I feel as dispassionate as Lurie himself. The disgrace of the dying though - the 'without grace' - that younger generations foist upon them. That they're made to feel as intruders in life, burdensome. This is where Coetzee hooks me. And he reels me in. Reels me in until I find myself suffocating in a world I want no part of. A world of shame, dishonor, humiliation, degradation. Disgrace. That of a man, a father, a daughter, a woman, an unborn child. Now make those plural. Add the disgraces of South Africa, of humanity, of animals. Yes, animals. I suspected Coetzee would sneak in a little commentary on that. He has a reputation. I did not expect to be so affected by it. I, a confirmed carnivore, did not expect to lie awake at night considering vegetarianism. Coetzee brings that passionate quote at the beginning of this paragraph back to hit me square in the face near the end though and - once again - Disgrace.
   So five stars, but would I recommend it? I'm still not sure. Read it if you dare. Coetzee is brilliant."
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