Kamerling, L. and Parrett, W. New-toFf/e Country. 1997. University of Alaska: Alaska Center for Documentary Film. 92 and 58 minutes, color, $440 (sale), $100 (rental). Heart of the Country chronicles the events of one school year at Kanayama Elementary School, a rural school...

STRAIT TO THE HEART OF COUNTRY All-star show to play first concert at stadium By DAVE TIANEN of the Journal Sentinel staff Friday, May 18, 2001 Call it Fiddlith Fair: an all-day country music hoedown complete with a second...

In the following essay, Lenta examines In the Heart of the Country on a number of levels, assessing the plot, characters, evolution of the work, the novel's historical significance, and how the work has been studied since its publication

South Africa may be the world's whipping-boy, but J. M. Coetzee is too intelligent a novelist to cater for moralistic voyeurs. This does not mean that he avoids the social and political crises edging his country towards catastrophe. But he chooses not to handle such themes in the direct, realistic way that writers of older generations, such as Alan Paton, preferred to employ. Instead, Coetzee has developed a symbolic and even allegorical mode of fiction—not to escape the living nightmare of So...

The pivotal event of J. M. Coetzee's second novel, In the Heart of the Country [published in the United States as From the Heart of the Country], is a cross-cultural seduction. Isolated and repressed since the death of his wife, a white South African sheepfarmer takes a desperate "lunge towards happiness" when he wins over with gifts, and finally brings into his own home, the young wife of his black foreman Hendrik. The act not only violates racial codes, but incites jealousy and madnes...