Africa Classics Fiction Historical Fiction Literature Novels South Africa

Waiting for the Barbarians

Name: Waiting for the Barbarians
Rating: 3.93 (35577 reviews)
Author: J.M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee October 27, 1980

3.93 35.6k Ratings

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Synopsis

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 oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.

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Waiting for the Barbarians

Books similar to Waiting for the Barbarians

The Covenant

Cry, the Beloved Country

The Grass Is Singing

Disgrace

The Sheltering Sky

Cannery Row

I, Claudius

Fifth Business

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