Waiting for the Barbarians: A Novel (Penguin Ink)

Coetzee is a master of putting very complex stories into simple packagings. This book is very deep, yet the story is simple: a magistrate of a wild outpost of an empire leads an easy life in peace until a colonel in the army comes by, which set off a number of events that ultimately put the magistrate against the empire. Coetzee writes in a very unique manner. Aside from the colonel (Joll), no one has a name in the book, he just refers to everyone as "the girl" or "the magistrate". As soon as the colonel visits the city with an obsession about an impending barbarian invasion, the entire town becomes paranoid with these barbarians. The barbarians in fact are just simple nomads that live in the adjacent mountains, but the obsession grows so quickly that the magistrate, when he tries to reach out to barbarians and understand who they are, he gets misunderstood as a barbarian helper and so is put in jail. Some of the best writing is the description of his time in prison and the abuse he underwent. Coetzee plays with metaphors relating to the body and its conditions in ways that leaving interesting impressions and provokes much thought. I am still grappling to get the right message out of the book, but conclude that there are many. Overall, this is an enjoyable and very short book. It is true literature, so not a very light reading if you are looking for a passtime. I needed to stop a couple of times to reflect on it, and was highly impressed by Coetzee. He definitely deserved the Nobel Prize.

In his book "Waiting For The Barbarians" Coetzee gives us another timeless window into a soul. Here Coetzee depicts the frivolous and capricious nature of the continuing war machine in the backdrop of 1970's South Africa. The book, in its nature was very reminiscent of George Orwell, in such tales as "Shooting An Elephant" where the life of a civil servant and the attrocities he must perform and witness shape the personality and thought patterns of the man.Here, Coetzee highlights the true cruelty that humanity can inflict upon other humans in its pursuit of whatever seems to be the right thing as determined by those in power at any particular point in time. It need not make sense, it need not be morally defensible, it only need be possible and performable, and it may be done. In the regime at the time, such was the situation, South Africa, like so many other places has been a war torn place for a very long time. In making his point, Coetzee puts together one of the finest sentences I have ever seen on paper, when he says this as the protagonist walks away from a senseless torture scene, "Let it at least be said, if it ever comes to be said, if there is ever anyone in some remote future interested to know the way we lived, that in this farthest outpost of the Empire of light there existed one man who in his heart was not a barbarian." The poignancy of that statement is deeply moving especially in these times in America. The ability of Coetzee to capture so distinctively and so personally the despair that is illustrated and experienced, and truly suffered by one in the position that his protaganist is in, is the greatness of Coetzee. To be able to transmit that feeling to his readers, as is his style, is his mastery. All sensitive readers should spend the time to consume this mere 157 page book, which gives at least 600 pages of expressiveness. Another fine piece of literature from a modern day master.

This is the third book I have read by Coetzee and each time I venture into his world, I am surprised at how he is able to represent complicated themes in so simple a story. In this novel, a magistrate rules his town peacefully until Colonal Joll comes and insists that the barbarians are a dangerous group that need to be quelled immediately. He is a wicked man who takes his weakness and manipulates it into cruelty towards others. Slowly, the town becomes equally obsessed with the "enemy" and the need to restore the peace which ironically was theirs for the taking before Joll arrived. Through a series of events, the magistrate is believed to have comitted treason and so undergoes direct persecution from Joll and his men. He is ripped from his place of office, thrown in jail and treated like an animal for almost a full year. It seems to him he is the only one fighting for justice and, more importantly, the only one standing up to Joll's cruelty. Strangely enough, Coetzee only assigns an actual name to Joll. The magistrate is simply "the magistrate," his lover, "the girl," etc.,etc. Other themes I have observed about Coetzee are his protagonists are often in a state of disgrace (the actual title to his most recent work) somewhere or somehow which, in turn, create the conflict of each story. Also, each protagonist is an infidel in one way or another. Married or single, he is free to answer whatever his sexuality requests of him. I have only read three of his books, so these trends may certainly not be consistent throughout all his writing. I just found the trend interesting. At any rate, Waiting for the Barbarians is captivating in its telling and gripping in it's underlying moral. I would highly recommend it be part of your must-read repetoir if it is not already.

From previous reviews on this page I'm convinced many readers did not read the same novel I did. As a South African I might have had priviledged access to a state of mind, but this novel soars above even such limitations. It is a masterpiece. It has haunted me with its power and subtlety for years. I first read it as a student, and have re-visited it twice since. Few books have affected me in quite the same way. Sometimes I open a chapter just to be inspired by the simplicity and elegance of the prose. Not a word wasted. To peel away the layers of meaning - civilization, barbarians, cruelty, love, impotence - seems unnecessary. I've always read it as a poem, thrilling at the powerful undertow of meaning.

Set in a landscape which moves almost unnoticably from what could be the Mediterranean, to desert, to tundra, to unrecognizable terrains, this idiosyncratic book allows an unusually independent view of patterns of human behaviour. It shows how often we depend for our understanding of the world on presumptions unconsciously signified in the labels we give to different times, places and individuals' positions within society. Coetzee subverts and calls into question these labels by taking them away as soon as they are offered. Our narrator, the Magistrate, could be in any country in the world and in any time in history; these things are constantly hinted at but never confirmed. He is an official, a respected member of his society at the beginning, but as soon as the reader gets used to this idea, it is denigrated bit by bit as first we see his private, human weaknesses, his failures with relationships, and then the violent public stripping of his position as he is suddenly no longer a rather corrupt big fish in a small pond but a reviled victim of political repression himself.The openness of this narrative still leaves me wondering whether I have been indoctrinated to create my own personal 'barbarians' in my perspective of other human beings with all their mysteries, contradictions and possible interpretations. One thing is for sure, this is a very human book.