Disgrace
At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless, shunned by his friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife. He retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding, where a brief visit becomes an extended stay as he tries to find meaning from the one remaining relationship. David attempts to relate to Lucy and to a society with new racial complexities are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that shakes all of his beliefs and threatens to destroy his daughter. In this wry, visceral, yet strangely tender novel, Coetzee once again tells "truths [that] cut to the bone" (The New York Times Book Review).
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What Hacker News says
- JM Coetzee - all, but Disgrace and Waiting for the Barbarians are good starting points.
- Good point on reading multiple viewpoints. As for fiction, there are a few writers who say true and interesting things about the world but they don't write Star Wars novels. I'd say "Disgrace" by Coetzee and "Demons" by Dostoevsky are examples.
- If you like James Michener, then The Covenant is a great read about South Africa
If you're looking for a somewhat bleak overview of corruption and despots since independence, then try Martin Meredith The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence
One of my favourites is Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
Disgrace, by JM Coetzee. Outstanding book, emotionally difficult to read. Made into a not-too-bad movie with John Malkovich, but the book is infinitely better.
- This is amazing. Disgrace is one of my favorite novels of all time and I always found it fascinating how versatile Coetzee is. The man seems to be good at everything.
- King Lear (Shakespeare). Disgrace (Coetzee). The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky). Тихий Дон (Sholohov's name is on the cover; there are several translations under various titles as Quiet Don or something like that).
- A bunch of books by Kahlil Gibran. Read The Prophet twice.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Problem Of Pain by C S Lewis
Disgrace by J M Coetzee
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
On Writing by Stephen King
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Dictionary Of The Khazars by Milorad Pavic
Candide by Voltaire
The Labyrinth Of Solitude | Life And Thought In Mexico by Ocavio Paz
I finished that last one today. Read this:
All men, at some moment in their lives, feel themselves to be alone. And they are. To live is to be separated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the mysterious future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature -- if that word can be used in reference to man, who has "invented" himself by saying "No" to nature -- consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.
I recommend this old book.
