OBOC - South Africa

South Africa offered many choices w.r.t books, but i wanted something that described the post-apartheid situation. Somehow the biggest story that remained in my mind of post-apartheid South Africa was the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" headed by Archibishop Tutu. I had also heard of the very high incidence of rape (even the reported cases) in South Africa. So I picked "Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee which I believe is a Booker Prize winner.




The book left me quite disturbed. The landscape painted was very bleak and full of misery. Hasn't the changed political situation done anything good to alleviate misery? That was the question that the book left me with.

The book deals with one painful subject after the other, sexual harrasment, rape, anarchy, racial tension, animal rights, land rights. Coetzee's brilliance is how he weaved all this together and still made you turn the page without feeling like you couldn't go along any further. There is the line in the book ""One gets used to things getting harder; one ceases to be surprised that what used to be as hard as hard can be grows harder yet". I almost felt like I had to keep going to see how much harder it is going to get!


The book almost seemed to say that the only way to survive and move forward was to give up everything, submit to the environment around you however brutal and demeaning it can be and when you have nothing more to lose you redeem some of your dignity by simply existing and putting your next step forward.

I guess that is how the entire nation must have felt during the apartheid years and at the end of apartheid maybe that is how many feel as they are attempting to rebuild their lives.

An awesome but very disturbing book!