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Disgrace ~ J. M. Coetzee

About the book: 1999 Booker Prize winner. After an exploitative relationship with one of his students goes wrong, a complacent and unrepentant David Lurie withdraws to his daughter’s farmhouse. Under nature-lover Lucy’s influence, the middle-aged father begrudgingly finds harmony and order in the remote South African countryside, when his stability is challenged anew as the power in the country shifts and the smallholding comes under siege. The incident threatens to further displace the white teacher, and his downfall appears complete when he discovers his own house has also been vandalised. Volunteering his services at an animal shelter, Lurie strikes an empathetic and compassionate bond with the stray and diseased dogs that must be put down.

About the author: Born in South Africa, John Michael Coetzee has PhD in Literature and works at the University of Cape Town. He is the first author to win the Booker Prize twice, having got the gong originally for the Life and Times of Michael K in 1983.

Critical response: ‘Disgrace … may well be … an authentically spiritual document, a lament for the soul of a disgraced century’ New Yorker

Stand out quote: ‘A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation. So that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant.’

Rule of Thumb: Thumbs up! – a real page-turner