ablukis's Full Review: J. M. Coetzee - Waiting for the Barbarians
The novella is an account of a colonial magistrate's fall from power in the garrison town of a nondescript empire. The specifics are elegantly omitted, much like Dostoevsky's towns of "N_____" or "Bishops of S______." The magistrate has a comfortable, if not sedate, existence as an administrator, serving a more or less indifferent and decaying military presence in a region too poor in resources to be considered strategically important. Throughout the course of the novel, there is a mounting expectation of conflict between the empire and "the barbarians," a nomadic tribe in the outskirts, beyond the reach of the empire's rule. They are a force perceived as not only revolting, but incontrovertibly violent and malignant without instigation. The thought of invasion lurks in each person under the benevolent wing of the empire.
Eventually, through liasons both amorous and otherwise with the supposed barbarians, the magistrate's natural tendencies for more empirical thought lead him to grow more sympathetic to and familiar with the "enemy." When the military machine of the empire arrives, the magistrate's conscience draws him to the defense of the indigenous tribes. As a result, he is subjected to the very same xenophobic rage and enmity that he has been long nurturing and defending.
The only two-time winner of the Booker Prize for fiction for Life and Times of Michael K. (1983) and Disgrace (1999), John Michael Coetzee is one of South Africa's most acclaimed authors and literary opponents of apartheid. Born in Capetown, South Africa, Coetzee first moved away from Africa to England, where he worked as a computer programmer. He later received a PhD in Linguistics from University of Texas, after which he taught at NYU. In the 1970s, he returned to South Africa and now teaches literature at the University of Cape Town. Around the time of his return to Cape Town, he wrote his third larger work, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won the CNA and several other prizes around 1980.
I found Coetzee's writing a pleasure to read not only for the well-crafted story but for the appreciation of a refined and truly deliberate technique. Upon beginning the much-acclaimed book, it quickly became evident to me why so many of my most erudite friends had come to be so fond of his work. I deeply enjoyed reading a piece of prose and sensing that, although the writer clearly has a rich array of styles at his disposal, the work is flawlessly pruned and potent. Although Coetzee can clearly write with a great flourish if he chooses to, the style of the novella remained deliberate, bare, and visceral. The book was also refined in a theoretical perspective. Not having known much about the author when reading the book, I couldn't help thinking of post-colonial theory authors like Edward Said, Homi K. Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak. The work would make an ideal text to use in discussing much of post-colonial literary theory. It is empty of details in all the right places, excruciatingly descriptive in others. It is remarkable to me to think that this was one of Coetzee's first books.
One can only begin to imagine what the magistrate's years spent alone in the isolation of his head must have been like. The tone of the book articulates this as if sounding out loud the main character's reminiscences of what he had seen... Slowly, thoughtfully, the voice shapes what it had seen and how it had felt. At times the reader feels rage, at others empathy. In the end, amidst the many conflicting emotions that the novel evokes, Waiting for the Barbarians strikes a clear tone that resounded in my mind for quite some time after I had finished reading it.
Set in an isolated outpost on the edge of a great Empire, WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppresse...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
Moving and powerful, this book presents the dark tale of an aging magistrate in an African frontier settlement, who finds himself becoming increasingl...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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