Wachten op de barbaren (original 1980; edição 1983)

A clear indictment of all nations built on colonial ambition but more broadly the propensity within all of us to characterise and brutalise The Other, Coetzee’s novel pulls no punches.

An anonymous magistrate rules over a small outpost on the edge of the frontier. His political placidity is disturbed by envoys from the capital who bring with them rumours of a Barbarian uprising, rumours he feels are being fomented as an excuse for a roundup. He’s not wrong.

The novel falls into two halves. The first tells of the magistrate’s management of the settlement in the face of outside interference. In particular it details his relationship with one particular indigenous woman.

This relationship is a the wider parable in microcosm. The two find their are mutually incomprehensible. One is all powerful, the other crippled and blinded. Attempts at intimacy are one-sided. The solution to all of this is, again, unilateral and it is at this point the book pivots.

The second half sees the magistrate in a very different position from the first. There’s less pschology going on here between reader and writer, I felt as the writing became more matter of fact. The ending is ambiguous and leaves the reader to make their own conclusions about what they have witnessed and what might yet come to pass.

Coetzee’s writing is sparse and perfectly suited to this novel. It doesn’t have the immediacy of Disgrace, and falls far short of the vast ephemeral beauty and tragedy of Islands. But if you’re having trouble getting hold of Islands, this will whet your appetite while you’re waiting. ( )

Coetzee works to his own standard. A trial of imagination through the border town surrounded by "barbarians", the story feels a little dated compared to his other work. ( )

This had a much bigger impact on me than when I read it the first time in 2008. The world has changed so much since then. ( )

"I should never have allowed the gates of the town to be opened to people who assert that there are higher considerations than those of decency."

Perhaps an epitaph for our world. If you like your Kafka with a large dose of morality in it, step this way. I wonder if there has ever been a period in human history in which this little work would not have its place however particularly apt it may seem right now.

This is the third Coetzee I've read now and all of them are economic in terms of paper spent, this one a mere 170 pages. And yet there is nothing in the prose to indicate a miserly attitude to words or to story line. Indeed, there is much wonderment in the book.
Nor could I always see why one part of my body, with its unreasonable cravings and false promises, should be heeded over any other as a channel of desire. Sometimes my sex seemed to me another being entirely, a stupid animal living parasitically upon me, swelling and dwindling according to autonomous appetites, anchored to my flesh with claws I could not detach. Why do I have to carry you about from woman to woman, I asked: simply because you were born without legs? Would it make any difference to you if you were rooted in a cat or dog instead of in me?

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/waiting-for-the-barbarian... ( )

"I should never have allowed the gates of the town to be opened to people who assert that there are higher considerations than those of decency."

Perhaps an epitaph for our world. If you like your Kafka with a large dose of morality in it, step this way. I wonder if there has ever been a period in human history in which this little work would not have its place however particularly apt it may seem right now.

This is the third Coetzee I've read now and all of them are economic in terms of paper spent, this one a mere 170 pages. And yet there is nothing in the prose to indicate a miserly attitude to words or to story line. Indeed, there is much wonderment in the book.
Nor could I always see why one part of my body, with its unreasonable cravings and false promises, should be heeded over any other as a channel of desire. Sometimes my sex seemed to me another being entirely, a stupid animal living parasitically upon me, swelling and dwindling according to autonomous appetites, anchored to my flesh with claws I could not detach. Why do I have to carry you about from woman to woman, I asked: simply because you were born without legs? Would it make any difference to you if you were rooted in a cat or dog instead of in me?

rest here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/waiting-for-the-barbarian... ( )