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Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)

by J. M. Coetzee

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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4,272762,633 (3.96)198
A modern classic by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee. His latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.  For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state. J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between opressor and opressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote × his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency. Mark Rylance (Wolf HallBridge of Spies), Ciro Guerra and producer Michael Fitzgerald are teaming up to to bring J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians to the big screen.… (more)
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» See also 198 mentions

English (61)  Dutch (9)  Spanish (2)  Italian (2)  German (1)  Swedish (1)  All languages (76)
Showing 1-5 of 61 (next | show all)
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. ( )
  mmcrawford | Dec 5, 2023 |
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.” ( )
  Gypsy_Boy | Aug 24, 2023 |
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. ( )
  kjuliff | Jan 17, 2023 |
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. ( )
  kid-pr0-kuo | Dec 17, 2022 |
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.” ( )
  Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 61 (next | show all)
Coetzees Roman ist ... voller Zeichen. Man möchte nicht von ihm lassen, ehe man ihn nicht entziffert hat.
 

» Add other authors (17 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Coetzee, J. M.primary authorall editionsconfirmed
Baiocchi, MariaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
BascoveCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bergsma, PeterTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Dedication
For Nicolas and Gisela
First words
I have never seen anything like it: two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire. Is he blind?
Quotations
One evening, rubbing her scalp with oil, massaging her temples and forehead, I notice in the corner of one eye a greyish puckering as though a caterpillar lay there with its head under her eyelid, grazing.
[...]

It has been growing more and more clear to me that until the marks on this girl's body are deciphered and understood I cannot let go of her. Between thumb and forefinger I part her eyelids. The caterpillar comes to an end, decapitated, at the pink inner rim of the eyelid. There is no other mark. The eye is whole.

I look into the eye. Am I to believe that gazing back at me she sees nothing--my feet perhaps, parts of the room, a hazy circle of light, but at the centre, where I am, only a blur, a blank? (Penguin Ink 35-36)
When Warrant Officer Mandel and his man first brought me back here and lit the lamp and closed the door, I wondered how much pain a plump comfortable old man would be able to endure in the name of his eccentric notions of how the Empire should conduct itself. But my torturers were not interested in degrees of pain. They were interested only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body which can entertain notions of justice only as long as it is whole and well, which very soon forgets them when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down its gullet and pints of salt water are poured into it till it coughs and retches and flails and voids itself. They did not come to force the story out of me of what I had said to the barbarians and what the barbarians had said to me. So I had no chance to throw the high-sounding words I had ready in their faces. They came to my cell to show me the meaning of humanity, and in the space of an hour they showed me a great deal. (Penguin Ink 132-33)
"No, you misunderstand me. I am speaking only of a special situation now, I am speaking of a situation in which I am probing for the truth, in which I have to exert pressure to find it. First I get lies, you see — this is what happens — first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth. That is how you get the truth."
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Wikipedia in English (1)

A modern classic by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee. His latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.  For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state. J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between opressor and opressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote × his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency. Mark Rylance (Wolf HallBridge of Spies), Ciro Guerra and producer Michael Fitzgerald are teaming up to to bring J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians to the big screen.

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