Waiting for the Barbarians
J. M. Coetzee
  • Published: 1 November 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099465935
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $19.99
Categories:

Waiting for the Barbarians

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‘A remarkable and original book’ Graham Greene

The modern classic from double Booker Prize winner J.M. Coetzee – soon to be a major film starring Mark Rylance, Robert Pattinson and Johnny Depp

For decades the Magistrate has run the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement, ignoring the impending war between the barbarians and the Empire, whose servant he is. But when the interrogation experts arrive, he is 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. Waiting for the Barbarians is an allegory of oppressor and oppressed. Not just a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times, the Magistrate is an analogue of all men living in complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.
  • Published: 1 November 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099465935
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $19.99
Categories:

About the author

J. M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting For the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

Also by J. M. Coetzee

Speaking in Tongues
Elizabeth Costello
The Good Story
Here and Now
The Childhood of Jesus
In the Heart of the Country
Stranger Shores
See all

Praise for Waiting for the Barbarians

Brilliant . . . The story of an imaginary Empire, set in an unspecified place and time . . . A realistic fable, at once exciting and economical . . . A distinguished piece of fiction

New York Times

I have known few authors who can evoke such a wilderness in the heart of man . . . Coetzee knows the elusive terror of Kafka

Sunday Times

A remarkable and original book

Graham Greene

J.M. Coetzee’s vision goes to the nerve centre of being. What he finds there is more than most people will ever know about themselves, and he conveys it with a brilliant writer’s mastery of tension and elegance

Nadine Gordimer

A powerful – even prophetic – intelligence at work

Independent on Sunday

This is a voice at once authoritative and subtle: a very powerful combination

Hermione Lee, Observer

A writer of formidable strength. His novel is important not only for its theme but also for the beauty and clarity of his style

Daily Telegraph

A work of great accomplishment

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Week
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