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...

[One] cannot help admiring the technical artistry of J. M. Coetzee's lyrical puzzle, In the Heart of the Country…. Patricide, rape, incest and miscegenation are not exactly unexplored themes in South African writing, though rarely have they been treated as hauntingly as in Coetzee's novel. The unnamed heroine's "monologue of the self" (as she refers to her tale) recapitulates her violent murder of her white father out of jealousy for his affair with his African work...

[In the Heart of the Country] is a novel that transcends nagging pragmatism. Its intensity of imagery and language, and its vivid, self-enclosed territory, make it the most original book I have read for a long time…. It is a difficult novel to describe. Every paragraph is numbered, which has the effect of creating a series of slight separations, slowly down one's reading speed. This is necessary, as the book, which is short, is as concentrated as a collection of African spices. Coetzee teaches...