Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

J. M.Coetzee (pronounced cut-SEE-uh), of Dutch Boer descent, won his second Booker Award for Disgrace, a novel set in South Africa of the near future. Initially the novel may strike us as a rather conventional academic tale about a professor of literature and modern languages at Cape Technical University who coldly seduces one of his students, but that story line quickly ends and the novel heads elsewhere. The arrogant David Lurie finds himself at 52 teaching basic composition courses instead of the humanities or his beloved Romantic poets; he would prefer to be writing a libretto about Lord Byron’s last years. Unrepentant after his affair is made public, the twice married and divorced Lurie is fired, but that action covers only about a quarter of the novel. It is when he travels to his unmarried daughter’s small farm and is forced to come to grips with the bitterness of post-apartheid South Africa that Lurie’s disgrace is made complete. When they are brutally attacked by three black men, he and his daughter Lucy are forced to make compromises and to accept what shelter they can find in the harsh rural world. In describing the novel, critics have used terms like “deeply disturbing,” “searing,” “at times almost unbearable,” and “compulsively readable.” If at the end Lurie appears to be headed toward redemption, readers will perceive that the way to grace begins at the very bottom.

History and heritage of South Africa
Additional Discussion Guide
Reading Guide and Resources

*Cover reprinted with permission from Penguin Group (U.S.A.) Inc.

Author Information

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1940, Coetzee, a descendant of Dutch colonialists, received his bachelor’s degrees with honors in English (1960) and mathematics (1961) from the University of Cape Town. After working briefly as a computer programmer in London, he received his master’s degree in 1963 from Cape Town and went on to earn his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Texas in Austin, after which he taught at the State University of New York in Buffalo until 1971. When his application for permanent residence in the United State was denied because of his anti-Vietnam War protests, he returned to South Africa where he taught at the University of Cape Town until his retirement in 2002, after which he immigrated to Australia, becoming a citizen in 2006. Married and divorced (a son died in an accident), Coetzee is considered reclusive. He does not drink, smoke, or eat meat, and he is known for his rigorous self-discipline. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003. His first novel, Dusklands, appeared in 1974; his most recent novel is Diary of a Bad Year (2007). In addition to ten novels, Coetzee has published eight books of nonfiction, including The Lives of Animals (1999), which examines the ethics of human-animal relations and which one reviewer has described as “a moral argument within a fictional framework.” Another reviewer refers to the book as a “postmodern metafiction.”

Biography and Bibliography by ContemporaryWriters.com

*Photo reprinted with permission, copyright Secker and Warburg

Discussion Questions

1. The protagonist of this award-winning novel may strike us as the worst sort of professor and as little more than a sexual predator, yet after what some would call his comeuppance, his just punishment, we may (or may not) feel some empathy for him. If the study of the humanities, and particularly of literature, is supposed to “humanize” us, to make us more thoughtful and sensitive human beings, what has gone wrong with David Lurie? What do you make of his behavior at the hearing in the sixth chapter?

2. What “literary” justice do you find in the manner of Lurie’s punishment? After all, it is his daughter Lucy who suffers the rape, and while his temporary blinding may be symbolically appropriate, her burden is considerably heavier than his. Why does she refuse to report the rape? Why does she agree to accept the protection of the neighbor Petrus, who appears complicit in the attack? Are we to assume that Coetzee intends to assert some sort of social justice for the suffering of black Africans under apartheid?

3. Does David Lurie’s suffering and humiliation dispose you to forgive him, if that is the correct verb to use in a literary context? Does he appear to be headed toward some form of redemption at the book’s end? How does his involvement with Bev Shaw and the dogs figure in here? It is said proverbially that “suffering builds character.” Is that the case with Lurie? Is he a better man at the end of the novel than he was at the beginning?

4. While it has become increasingly popular for writers to use the present tense in their fiction instead of the traditional past tense narration, this may be the first novel in which you have encountered that narrative perspective used throughout. Do you like that, or would you prefer the traditional past tense? What would you say is gained or lost in Coetzee’s choice of the present tense?

5. While this novel does not necessarily presume much knowledge of Byron’s life and poetry, it might prove worthwhile to investigate, perhaps via the internet. You will discover that Byron himself suffered disgrace in his brief life (1788-1824), that after a painful divorce he was ostracized from British society. Lord Byron’s possible liaisons with his half-sister and later with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, then a married woman, added to the scandal. What do these literary allusions (the new critical term for it is “intertextuality”) add to the novel, if anything?

6. What appears to disturb Lucy most about her rape is that it was “so personal” (pg. 156), even though the perpetrators did not know her. Her father (she refers to him by his first name) suggests that it “was history speaking through them.” Do these two perspectives on the violence make sense to you? Does it seem to you that Lucy tries to justify what has happened to her? That is, if she can understand the rationale behind her rape, can make sense of it, then she can live with it. Why doesn’t she just sell the farm and leave?