In a Dark Time: Coetzee's Disgrace

Abstract Like Kafka's The Trial and Camus' The Stranger, J. M. Coetzee's concise, austere masterpiece Disgrace (1999) is densely allusive, thematically rich and subtly suggestive. This personal and political novel explores two kinds of disgrace and takes us on a complex moral journey. David Lurie, a white South African who seduces his student, loses his job and status as a professor. He's then shamed in a different way when his daughter, Lucy, is raped. Like the heroes of Kafka and Camus, Lurie is alienated from his colleagues and social milieu. A self-described slave to Eros, torn between reason and desire, he's even alienated from himself. He has, at first, no real understanding of why he's been disgraced. But when Lucy is dispossessed by the blacks, he finally discovers the core of his own integrity.