This was my first Coetzee and it was...fine. I hope this allegorical effort led to better things. I suppose it's the nature of allegory, but this examination of 'who is really the barbarian?' felt heavy-handed. And the focus on an old man's sexual activity with younger women didn't make it more profound. ( )

According to the (no doubt infallible) Nobel folks, this is "a political thriller in the tradition of Joseph Conrad, in which the idealist’s naiveté opens the gates to horror." Well, they’re entitled to their opinion. It is another great book that can trace its inspiration to C.P. Cavafy (Buzzati’s Tartar Steppe as well). I often got the feeling, as I was reading, that this was science fiction, in part due to Coetzee’s situating the story with virtually no context: no place, no time, nothing to give the reader a “handle” to help ground the story, about which more below. It is also worth keeping in mind that the townspeople use the word “barbarians” to describe the indigenous people around them and that Coetzee wrote this book in South Africa in 1982. There is a good summary of the narrative in Wikipedia if you want the story line, but this book is clearly about far more than the story—absorbing as that is. The most useful commentary I have found on the book comes from its review by Irving Howe, a masterful literary critic. Howe wrote that the book
“is a distinguished piece of fiction, and what Mr. Coetzee has gained from his strategy of creating an imaginary Empire is clear. But are there perhaps losses too? One possible loss is the bite and pain, the urgency that a specified historical place and time may provide. To create a 'universalized' Empire is to court the risk…that a narrative with strong political and social references will be ‘elevated’ into sterile ruminations about the human condition. As if to make clear what I'm getting at, Mr. Coetzee's American publishers quote from a London review of the novel by Bernard Levin: ‘Mr. Coetzee sees the heart of darkness in all societies, and gradually it becomes clear that he is not dealing in politics at all, but inquiring into the nature of the beast that lurks within each of us....' That ‘a heart of darkness’ is present in all societies and a beast ‘lurks within each one of us’ may well be true. But such invocations of universal evil can deflect attention from the particular and at least partly remediable social wrongs Mr. Coetzee portrays. Not only deflect attention, but encourage readers, as they search for their inner beasts, to a mood of conservative acquiescence and social passivity.” ( )

I’ve read this novel several times and for me it’s a classic as I remember it’s plot and environment in detail. Often I’ll enjoy a novel but though years later I remember I loved it, I cannot recall it in any sort of detail. ( )

It's been a while since I've come across a book that truly impressed me. "Waiting for the Barbarians" was a refreshing respite from the long, long list of half-finished books I was in the habit of reading. I found the author's voice to be genuine and relatable while at the same really deft at weaving a plot that hits you only halfway through as being a particularly poignant allegory on what it means to be civilised. Highly recommend. ( )

A Magistrate presides over a small frontier town at the edge of the desert, living in a peaceful coexistence with the indigenous population, until the arrival of Colonel Joll of the Third Bureau, the military arm of the ruling Empire. The Colonel and his troops have been sent to put down an uprising of Barbarians; however, no such uprising is actually occurring. Nevertheless, the troops follow orders by rounding up suspects and detaining them, while the Colonel “questions” them via torture. The Magistrate at first distracts himself to avoid confronting the fact that the detainees are being tortured, but eventually his conscience will not allow him to remain a passive observer and he takes action that puts him at odds with the Empire. The story is told in first-person by the Magistrate, so the reader is privy to his thoughts as he muses philosophically on this moral crisis, while not letting himself off the hook for his own involvement as a bureaucrat doing the bidding of the Empire. His thoughts stray into his sexual liaisons, and he develops an unusual relationship with one of the brutalized women.

This slim volume may be read as an allegory condemning imperialism. It is narrated by an unnamed Magistrate in an unspecified country by an unidentified Empire. It shows exploitation and control through incitement of fear, violence against the native populace, and sexual dominance over women. It is graphic in its descriptions of torture, sexual practices, and other bodily functions. The prose is masterful and contains a good amount of Biblical symbolism. The final chapter is not quite as strong as the previous sections. This book provides food for thought on the decision to act in the face of injustice, while recognizing the personal risks. Published in 1980, with obvious allusions to apartheid in South Africa, it remains a timeless statement denouncing the dehumanization of those viewed as “other.” ( )