Waiting For The Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee
#BookReview #bookrecommedation #pulitzar
This book is written by double booker prize winner J.M. Coetzee. He is a South African born author. One of my friend suggested this book and i am very thankful to him for introducing me with this book. The book was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century.
And soon to be a major film starring Mark Rylance, Robert Pattinson and Johnny Depp so i was overwhelmed to read it.
This book is written on the backdrop of colonial African life, it's a story of a magistrate who has run the affairs of a tiny settlement in South Africa. when the interrogation experts arrived he was jolted into sympathy with the victims and into a quixotic act of rebellion which lands him in prison, branded as an enemy of the state. It's a story about the oppressor and the oppressed.
Story evolved around the middle-aged magistrate and a native young girl whom he sheltered in his house. This story developed in a very different manner as you go with it. This relationship will penetrate your heart, cakes your mind with some graphic details detested your tongue for a while. It's a story of ignorance and about a native girl- a Barbarian girl- a person of no account, who sheltered in the magistrate's house ! A very different kind of story you have ever read.
A thought-provoking story, a story of self realisation.
"I imagine, ignorant that it has its own rhythms..." When you read some lines like this - "..will be touched with the contagion and turned into a creature that believes in nothing..." Just be sure the Story is changing its path and sometimes you have to re-read every single word to get to enter that changing part.
If i was read any other book of struggling life, where depicted the story of fight for life and pain of ignorance then I would probably write - the writer portrayed all the pain and sorrow very beautifully... But no, for this particular book I can't write down those words. For me this book is blatant . This is the style i have never really read before. There are no exotic pain of fighting spirit kinda story rather it's written in very easy to read format, sentences are very emotionless, flat tone, yet you feel emotional. Flat from the writer hurts more than you ever imagined. Every lines of this book sounds very raw, earthy and bare !!! Yes this is the perfect word to describe the book, the simple bare tone in every sentence will torn you apart. It's not beautiful it's bare !! It will strip your soul, it's very deep with an easy going style...it hurts !!!
Actually you need time to get reflection of every single word.
After Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003, Penguin Books named Waiting for the Barbarians for its series "Great Books of the 20th Century". The Nobel Prize committee called Waiting for the Barbarians "a political thriller in the tradition of Joseph Conrad, in which the idealist’s naiveté opens the gates to horror".
John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African-born novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. His work has been compared favourably with Nabokov, Kafka and Conrad, and by the time of mature works such as Foe (1986) he had already achieved international acclaim
This book is written on the magistrate's point of view which is perfect to expose the feeling that author want to let you feel . Some people may find it's a dull read, distasteful and monotonous, but those who really want to explore the literature world, it would be a treat for them.
I will rate this book 4
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