Dusklands

A megalomaniac Boer frontiersman wreaks hideous vengeance on a Hottentot tribe for undermining the 'natural' order of his universe with their anarchic rival order, mocking him and subjecting him to the humiliations of his own all too palpable flesh. A specialist in psychological warfare is driven to breakdown and madness by the stresses of a project of macabre ingenuity to win the war in Vietnam. Both the 18th-century Jacobus Coetzee and the 20th-century Eugene Dawn are in the business of pushing back the frontiers of knowledge and are dealers in death who denounce their own humanity and spurn their feelings of guilt. In these two narratives, Coetzee has crystallized in their absurdity and horror the extremes of scientific evangelism and heroic exploration

“Coetzee's vision goes to the nerve center of being”

"" -- Nadine Gordimer "Its unflinching sense of loss, its claustrophobic acknowledgement of the unwilling interdependence of master and slave, and its subtle prose-style, make it an extraordinary achievement" Guardian "His writing gives off whiffs of Conrad, of Nabokov, of Golding, of the Paul Theroux of The Mosquito Coast. But he is none of these, he is a harsh, compelling voice" Sunday Times "Intense, clear and powerful. The promise, so brilliantly fulfilled in his later work, is clear in this earliest novel" Daily Telegraph

J. M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting For The Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood- Scenes From Provincial Life, Youth, and Disgrace, which won the Booker Prize, making him the first author to have won it twice. In 2003 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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