Disgrace....By J.M.Coetzee

I read this novel first time in 2003 December, my first winter holidays in America. Almost undoubtedly, this was an awful pick especially when I was all alone in my apartment with all my roommates and friends out on vacation. Disgrace is an exceptionally dark book about distressed people in disquieting times. After I completed reading this book, I was miserable for days and felt even more forlorn. Despite its obscurity, this book is excellently crafted work of pain and candor set up in post apartheid epoch in South Africa.

The story revolves around a twice-divorced old professor of communications and romantic poetry at cape technical university, David Lurie. He is a 52 yr old man whose position in college was reduced despite which he taught his classes devotedly. He visited prostitutes unremittingly for his sexual needs. He had just ended an affectionate relation with a prostitute and was looking for another sexual partner. One evening he meets an attractive student from his romantic poetry class, Melanie. Tête-à-tête leads to an intimate relationship. Lurie, although, sentient of the fact that this association will be disastrous for him, goes ahead with the affair. One day he completely ignores Melanie’s wish of not having sex. Circumstances go haywire after this. Mealanie and her father file a sexual harassment case against him. Lurie confesses he is guilty of all the charges but repudiates to express any remorse for his acts in front of an academic committee. With the shifting course of zephyr in the new era, the university was also transforming into a contemporary society. This contemporary society wanted remorse and an acknowledgement that he made a mistake, which he was not willing to do. By the end of first quarter of the book disgraced by his actions, David lurie is forced to leave Cape Town.

He goes to live with his daughter Lucy. She is living alone in countryside on a small plot of land and sells flower for living. There he tries to revive his relationship with his daughter. There he also faces the challenge of understanding and adjusting to the changing equation of blacks and whites relationship in post apartheid Africa. It was here where he again stumbles upon disgrace but this time from receiving end. Three ruffians beat him, pilfer there belongings and rape his daughter. Lurie later tells that they did not rape Lucy to have sex but as an act of Lucy and Lurie’s subjection and subjugation. Lucy and Lurie were white and their assailants black. Lucy decides not to report her rape but instead only report the assault on Lurie and stolen chattels. Lurie is outraged and wants justice this time but Lucy confronts him with the fact that in this changing time no authority or process is equipped to deal with there situation. In the book, there is manifestation of rule of law but throughout the novel, there is barely any respect shown for the authorities and procedures. Lucy like Lurie does not believe in the law and so does not want to report her rape though this time the situation for lucy was more complicated than lurie’s. Lucy has a black hand, Petrus. Petrus had affirmed his independence by buying his own plot of land and working on it. Lucy had realized that this is what the future in South Africa holds for her and she will be able to survive there only at his sufferance. As the story progresses there is a palpable and expedient shift of power from lucy to petrus. Lurie returns to cape town. He starts helping in an animal clinic. In the meantime, Lucy's situation becomes more precarious, but she will not accept Lurie's offer of escape.

At times, the haughtiness or absurdity of the characters in resisting doing what is the obvious solution gets under my skin. Lurie is willing to send Lucy to Holland, but she does not want to abandon her small piece of land. I fail to understand what holds her back from leaving considering the sort of life she has here, despite the compromises she will have to make. But then, the protagonists are the soul of this narrative and the fact that they are very convoluted and classically perplexing delineates the novel. I find it very distressing that instead of getting over the rape Lucy decides to live with the reminiscence of it, her rape child. Even her logic of keeping her child did not bode well.
Asked whether she loves the child growing in her yet she says: No. How could I ? But I will. Love will grow -- one can trust Mother Nature for that. I am determined to be a good mother.

At this stage, lurie chooses not to remind lucy where her fortitude has gotten her, nor does he question her premise of love. This time, for the first time, he chooses to be supportive of a woman in his life.

Ending of this novel will leave you dreadfully bitter and wanting to amend it. After a lot of contemplation, I could not think of any other obvious ending. The story is immensely sad and no fairytale quick fixes have been offered by Coetzee and rightly so. Can there be any quick fixes to a predicament, which is a product of a century of racial oppression? Coetzee’s protagonists throw light to the post apartheid times in south Africa. Despite the darkness of the story, Coetzee keeps the reader cling to the book with his impregnable yet exquisite tone. This book is brutally truthful and immensely compelling, often moving. What i found most compelling about this book is its bellow of agony and its imperative honesty. This is a must read book for every person but don’t read it when you are alone.