Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Kudos to the graphic designer
of this novel, because I do
judge a book by its cover

This is another deviation from my Reading Round the World challenge, but one I'm glad I made.

John Maxwell Coetzee was born in South Africa, of Afrikaner extraction. In his 20s he moved to the UK, and then to the USA. He applied for American citizenship, but was refused, partially it seems due to his protests against the Vietnam war. As of 2002 he has lived in Australia. 

Coetzee has a vast back catalogue of work, having regularly released novels, autobiographical works, short stories and essays since the early 1970s. He is one of the most decorated writers in the English language, including the Booker Prize twice (the first writer to do so) and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Disgrace was published in 1999 (it is a personal point of chagrin that the edition I read was published under Penguins 'Vintage' imprint - 1999 is practically yesterday!) Somehow, this is the first of Coetzee's books I have read.

David Lurie is a lecturer specialising in the Romantic Poets in Cape Town, an affair with a student leads to his dismissal - his Disgrace of the title - and being left aimless he wonders in and out of his daughter's life, and attempts to write an opera based on the life of Byron in Italy.

Coetzee is still active as of 2025,
though has moved away from the
structure of his previous novels, 
to a more experimental and
autobiographical nature. 

Disgrace's straightforward prose belies its complexity. Lurie's affair raises questions of consent (and this is twenty odd years before the #metoo movement) and is compared with what happens to his own daughter.

[Spoilers Ahead] 

The two instances could both be described as rape, yet because Lurie's acts had a veneer of civility, and no violence, they are framed in a very different light. This is mirrored with Lurie's feelings about seeing sheep that are to be slaughtered for meat - does sanitising sin make it more acceptable?

Lurie's work on the Byron opera has parallels with all the other women he has relationships with. When he researches the life of Teresa Guiccioli, Byron's lover in Italy, she doesn't fit the role he wanted for her in his opera, just like Melanie doesn't fit his expectations of a lover, or Lucy as a daughter.

[Spoilers Over]

Disgrace is an incredible novel, and JM Coetzee an author I will be exploring more of in the future. It is an easy ★★★★★