J. M. Coetzee (born 1940) was a white South African novelist whose writings reflected strong anti-imperialist sentiments. John M. Coetzee, the son of a sheep farmer, was born in Cape Town in 1940 and was educated in both South Africa and the United State...

J. M. Coetzee published his first novel, Dusklands , in 1974 and since then has become one of South Africa's leading writers. As the many literary awards he has received testify, however, his reputation is not only local but international. John Maxwell C...

"When some men suffer unjustly . . . it is the fate of those who witness their suffering to suffer the shame of it." This observation by the Magistrate in J. M. Coetzee's 1980 novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, may well serve as an epigraph to the body o...

In "Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee, Petrus can be seen as an apparently peripheral figure in the novel because of his position society and because he only has tenuous links with the protagonist, David Lurie. Nevertheless he is without doubt the character most central to our understanding of post-apartheid South Africa, as he is the character who clashes the European idealised David Lurie.

Reviews the book Disgrace. Explores the character of David Lurie. Considers his merits as a tragic hero.

Post-Apartheid: Discussing the possibility of hope or revenge