Introduction

Summary

Since it first appeared in 1999, Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace has provoked wide readership, political controversy, and strong critical performances. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the novel follows Prof. David Lurie as he encounters disgrace, first through his sexual exploitation of one of his students, and then through the gang-rape of his only daughter. Lurie's refusal to negotiate his public confession of guilt over his abusive affair leads to his dismissal, and his daughter's refusal to pursue her black rapists' capture baffles and angers him. These parallel events force him to radically re-evaluate his life, with harrowing results. The novel's stark portrayal of the “new” South Africa outraged many in that country, who found the book regressive, even racist. It also challenged audiences worldwide to look past easy personal and political solutions to the dilemmas of race and gender. It earned Coetzee a second Booker Prize, and has already provoked a great deal of critical attention in the academy, and well beyond. This is the first full-length book devoted to interpreting and teaching this important and disturbing novel.

In many ways our book closely resembles other academic essay collections on individual texts. We are eager to contribute to the critical conversation burgeoning around Coetzee's great novel, and to enrich its teaching in college classrooms. But in other ways our book is significantly different from its companions in this genre, and in ways that will shape, we hope, how readers approach it. To make these differences clear and useful, we need first to say a few things about how our project began, and about its participants.