This book easily shows why Coetzee has won the nobel price for literature and the Booker prize. It is also easy to see why the South African government isn't really happy with Coetzee. Although it's sad that Mbeki's government actually displays its Africanness by publicly commenting on the book.

'Disgrace' is about a Cape Town professor who has an affair with a student, gets booted off university and decides to stay for a while at his lesbian daughter's farm. There, he's present when the house gets trashed, they get robbed, he almost burns to death and his daughter is raped. The culprits are known to the daughter's helping hand, a black man aspiring to become more of a farmer.

Where the professor wants to see justice served, the daughter prefers to accept the situation, choosing to become the helping hand's third wife and, through that, obtaining protection from other harms. Clearly, the daughter also sees the rape as a delayed retribution for the atrocities that occured during her father's lifetime.

The book underlines the new form of apartheid which is taking shape in today's South Africa. Again an apartheid along colored lines, but this time voluntarily and culture-based.

Coetzee tells about the powder keg that many believe South Africa is. The clashes between the different colors, but also the clashes between young and old. Many believe that the changes happening in Zimbabwe over the last couple of years will happen in South Africa too, over the next decade. Coetzee seems to support that view and has woven a nice tale to support it.

Released on Wednesday, July 07, 2004 at Funky Monkey guesthouse in Nelspruit, Mpumelanga South Africa.

In the common room, on the stack of books.