This book is an absolute must read. Coetzee is a very interesting and subtle thinker and writer. It is easy to see his writing in the context of his roots as a white man growing up in South Africa through the apartheid era. But there is a lot more to him than that. The apartheid experience may have been the catalyst to his thinking and world view but his reach extends far beyond that specific situation. Coetzee is fundamentally a deep moral thinker, and a writer who explores the deep social structures, power relations and driving forces in modern western civilization.
You can read him as an exploration of good and evil in the modern world. You can read him as an exploration of empire, corporate culture and bureaucratic power structures and their effect of human relations and society' moral sense. You can read him as an explorations of the clash or conflict between the modern western society's world view/values and other older cultures built on entirely different premises. You can read him as an exploration of western social power structures and relations. You can read him as an exploration of the dynamics of Empire (and thus a history of the modern Western world).
The narrator's failed quest to truly understand the difference of the Other in the people that surround him is intriguing, and also quite possibly a critical look at the liberal left of Europe and North America. There is a wonderful passage to the effect that he, the narrator, represents the face of Empire when times are good; the sadistic army officer, the face of Empire when times are bad. Two faces, but the same Empire, the same dynamic, the same power structure.
A complex book worth rereading several times.
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