num_pages: 220
description: A divorced, middle-aged English professor finds himself increasingly unable to resist affairs with his female students. When discovered by the college authorities, he is expected to apologise and repent in an effort to save his job, but he refuses to become a scapegoat in what he see as as a show trial designed to reinforce a stringent political correctness. He preempts the authorities and leaves his job, and the city, to spend time with his grown-up lesbian daughter on her remote farm. Things between them are strained - there is much from the past they need to reconcile - and the situation becomes critical when they are the victims of a brutal and horrifying attack. In spectacularly powerful and lucid prose, J.M. Coetzee uses all his formidable skills to engage with a post-apartheid culture in unexpected and revealing ways. This examination into the sexual and politcal lawlines of modern South Africa as it tries desperately to start a fresh page in its history is chilling, uncompromising and unforgettable.
language: English
title: Disgrace
titlecomplete: Disgrace
characters: Bev Shaw, Melanie Isaacs, Petrus, Lucy Lurie, David Lurie
genres: Fiction, South Africa, Literature, Classics, Novels, Contemporary, Nobel Prize, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Africa
ratings_count: 103206
places: Grahamstown, Cape Town, South Africa
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 915177600000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book Overall, awardedAt: 1199174400000
name: The Best of the Booker, awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Vintage