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From Publishers Weekly
Harsh, unflinching and powerful, Coetzee's ( Waiting for the Barbarians ) new novel is a cry of moral outrage at the legacy that apartheid has created in South Africa. In scenes of stunning ferocity, he depicts the unequal warfare waging between the two races, a conflict in which the balance of power is slowly shifting. An elderly woman's letters to her daughter in America make up the narrative. Near death from rapidly advancing cancer, Cape Town resident Mrs. Curren is a retired university professor and political liberal who has always considered herself a "good person" in deploring the government's obfuscatory and brutal policies, though she has been insulated from the barbarism they produce. When the teenage son of her housekeeper is murdered by the police and his activist friend is also shot by security forces, Mrs. Curren realizes that "now my eyes are open and I can never close them again." The only person to whom she can communicate her anguished feelings of futility and waste is an alcoholic derelict whom she prevails on to be her messenger after her death, by mailing the packet of her letters to her daughter. In them she records the rising tide of militancy among young blacks; brave, defiant and vengeful, they are a generation whose hearts have turned to iron. His metaphors in service to a story that moves with the implacability of a nightmare, Coetzee's own urgent message has never been so cogently delivered.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
This is the South African novelist's most direct indictment of apartheid yet. It takes the form of a letter-diary from Mrs. Curren, a former classics professor dying of cancer, to her daughter in America. She details a series of strange events that turn her protected middle-class life upside down. A homeless alcoholic appears at her door, eventually becoming her companion and confessor. Her liberal sentiments and her very humanity are tested as she experiences directly the horrors of apartheid. She comes to recognize South Africa as a country in which the rigidity of both sides has led to barbarism and to acknowledge her complicity in upholding the system. Less allegorical than Coetzee's previous novels, this is still richly metaphoric. A brilliant, chilling look at the spiritual costs of apartheid. Recom mended.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Personal!,
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This review is from: Age Of Iron (Paperback)
One can't help but be touched by the personalities woven in this story. Far from stereotypes, the characters are given credibility as individuals, each with their own stories, each with their own reasons for action. Even with the fall of official apartheid, this book goes into the human condition, and with or without governmental promotion, apartheid or something very much like it, will always be with us.
4.0 out of 5 stars
You can be in the middle of hell and not see it,
By Dave Brooks "the digital buffalo" (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Age Of Iron (Paperback)
Interesting and non-obvious look at apartheid. This book raises questions such as: what responsibility does one have for the crimes of a government that have benefitted you - even if you find those crimes repulsive and didn't ask for them; what kind of future can a nation have when it's children have been so brutalized that they become brutalizors themselves. I also think, as my title implies, that this book really exposes the way a community can blind itself or be blinded by others, gov't, media, etc., to the carnage and horror taking place all around them. If you can believe that a South African would be blind to the inhumanity trangressing in their country, then it's not so hard to believe how people in less brutal situations can also not understand or believe what goes on in their community.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worth your time,
By
This review is from: Age Of Iron (Paperback)
Coetzee presents us with a picture of apartheid from the perspective of an old woman in South Africa who had never had a chance to get close her own country's reality.Definitely worth your time. Easy to read too.
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