Disgrace by JM Coetzee : A Review

Sep 9, 13, Mon
Today I finished Disgrace by J M Coetzee. It was a very real experience. It is prose in body but is a poetry in soul indeed. Unbelievable writing. It appears that a group of writers of different ages and fields grouped together to write this book. That is the magic of Coetzee. As we all are aware this book already won numerou prizes and praise including Booker and Nobel. The situation in South Africa this book portrays can be said about all muslim countries too, including India.

Their is a situation where David Lurie (the protagonist) try hard to persuade her daughter to take steps against her molesters and she refuses to blame even speak any ill of them. The situation is very same like that when Richard Gere kissed Shilpa Shetty onstage forcely against her will and she got cornered by stating it as a way to say hello in their country.

Although this book deals with the issues of racial conflicts but the same tension between the races can be seen in India across religion. As this book praises that after post-apartheid era things in urban South Africa is getting better but as worst as it wad before in rural.

In 2006, in some magazine Nadine Gordimer commented that Coetzee's South Africa is not the same in which she grew. These types of comments comes because of the bad representation of a black person in the book or can be regarded as the villain. But thats upto a reader what he acknowledges and what touche his heart. The protagonist of this book is itself so evil and disgraceful person that we start hating him from the very first line, but as the book progresses we start pitying him due to the worsening condition of her daughter. And our sympathy withh him keep increasing until at last he gave up all hope.

This book is a 'book' written in 'language', that is this book itself defines what a book is and what it should cotain. Candid and apt representation of language and literature. Reading it creates a sublime moment. No hunger, no sleep, even the dictionary remains left untouched against the curiosity of finding what's next. And too because there wasn't any need to look for the dictionary as sentences told their meaning through themselves. It's like the whole book speaks whith you as Coetzee starts explaining the complicated verses of wordsworth and Byron and then hint us to decipher the allegories of his own prose which without being complex is wonderful.

P.S.: A woderful book but I will not refer this book to others or they will refer me a perve!