by J.M. Coetzee
This is my second book by Coetzee after reading Disgrace. It is very different from Disgrace being a sort of Kafkaesque parable. It is about a magistrate that administers a sleepy backwater for the Empire. There are Barbarians outside the gates. The Magistrate eventually comes to sympathize with...
This is one of those short books that impacts you sometimes like a punch in the gut, and sometimes with a far more quiet, lingering power. Beautifully written in a spare, but often lyrical, style and intimate first-person voice, it has the quality of a fairytale or allegory. Narrated by a man we kno...
This is a fable that takes place in an unnamed border town between an imaginary Empire and its wild frontier. The town's aging Magistrate undergoes a trial of values and conscience as his peaceful routine is shattered by the Empire's declaration of war against nomadic tribes living outside its juris...
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