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Title: In the Heart of the Country by J. M. Coetzee ISBN: 0-14-006228-9 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1982 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Writing of her Dis-aster
Comment: In the Heart of the Country tells the story of Magda, an old spinster who lives à huis clos with her father, her step-mother and the servants Henrik and Klein Anna, on a far-flung farm in the middle of the veld. The novel is set at an unspecified time, the present tense heightens this sense of timelessness. Madga's dis-aster starts at her birth since she is not the male heir that the baas has long wished for and who will keep the lineage alive. Therefore, Magda's only way of making a show of resistance to this despotic patriarch is to write her story and make her voice heard so as not to be "one of the forgotten ones of history" (3).
The novel is structured in fragments numbered from 1 to 266 to convey a seeming sense of linearity and thus give the reader a precarious fil conducteur to hold on to. But, by and by, the reading becomes somewhat disorienting and dis-astrous. Indeed, the boundary between reality and imagination is often blurred to our detriment since we vacillate endlessly between the two. Magda's narrative is riddled with adverbs of uncertainty, repetitions and at times contradictions. Yet, she has managed to accomplish an ingenious feat : captivate the reader's attention until the last page of the novel only to realize that s/he comes out of it none the wiser because all the contradictions that permeate the novel remain baffling.
Coetzee's novel achieves a double goal. First, to give voice to the voiceless Other, Magda, allowing her to dissolve the totalising linearity of the patriarchal discourse. Second, to condemn Apartheid as an authoritarian regime and portend its demise, and in both endeavours Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country has succeeded masterfully.
Rating: 5
Summary: The first novel, the most ferocious pain...
Comment: This novel is Coetzee's descent into madness essay, but it is more of a plane crach into madness. His most openly philosophical work except perhaps Master of Petersburg.
It is ruthless, graphic, horrific, magnificent, brilliant and unfathomably profound.
Rating: 5
Summary: 5 stars are not enough
Comment: It is not a question of loving Coetzee, but of loving great literature. This is great literature. Disregard poor reviews. This work is so well written, so moving and finely wrought. It stands beside not only the best of Coetzee's work, but also the best work of the 20th Century. It is fiction and meta-fiction. A pastoral novel and a novel about the pastoral novel. An acheivement of the hightest order!
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Title: Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee, Michael Coetzee ISBN: 0140074481 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: February, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee ISBN: 014006110X Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: April, 1982 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Age of Iron by J. M. Coetzee ISBN: 0140275657 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Dusklands by J. M. Coetzee ISBN: 0140241779 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1985 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee ISBN: 0140296409 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 31 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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