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" I have known few authors who can evoke such a wilderness in the heart of man. He is an artist of a weight and depth that put him beyond ordinary comparisons...Coetzee knows the elusive terror of Kafka." -- "Sunday Times"
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WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2003
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
For me, this is the best of Coetzee's books. Rarely has this form of human loneliness been expressed with the same poetic and tragic ease. The desert in the story seems to grow and grow unrelentingly, stopping not even to allow the captain space to breathe. And behind the soft exposition of the plight of the isolated town in the story is pin-sharp writing; not a word has been wasted. By his very economy with words, Coetzee takes us to the edge of the abyss and we only realise it when staring hard into it. A remarkable book, and nothing less than a masterpiece.
21 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I enjoyed this softly written, almost poetic book. It is an allegorical tale, exploring oppression, guilt and personal morality, and set in a strange and timeless place 'on the edge of the Empire:' The story of a gentle man whose motives are always mixed, but who in the end is the prime force for decency and humanity in the enclosed world he inhabits. Well written in a simple and earthy style that still allows the author to handle the broad themes of guilt and redemption. Coetzee creates a real sense of life on the edge of a literal and metaphysical desert, and by the end of the book, there is no doubt just who the Barbarians are.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
J M Coetzee's 1980 allegorical gem is heavily influenced by Dino Buzzati's Tartar Steppe, perhaps the most existentially melancholic novel of the twentieth century. Both are set in remote outposts in vast empty wildernesses where man and his constructions are literally just dots on the horizon. In each book there is an enemy, undefined except by rumour and by name: the northerners in Buzzati, the barbarians in Coetzee (though he does once refer to them as northerners, thus signifying his debt to Buzzati). However, the other worldliness of the Tartar Steppe is given a definite point of reference in Waiting for the Barbarians; that of a repressive imperial state resembling in theme, if not environment, Vorster's apartheid South Africa.
The narrator is a lonely magistrate in a frontier town who, though far from the centre of the oppressive state security apparatus, is complicit in its existence by administering its laws (and abusing his position by frequent sexual dalliances with vulnerable women). It doesn't take participation, just indifference, a blind eye. Although always uneasy about his role in the system, he continues as benignly as possible in order to lead a quiet life. It is only on the arrival of a group of interrogators, and having witnessed their arbitrary and brutal methods, that he instinctively rebels. At one point a girl is invited to pick up a rod and beat a prisoner in the yard. `You are depraving these people!' he shouts. He is thus branded an enemy of the state and a `barbarian lover' and committed to prison and subjected to a regime of humiliation and degradation. The breathless tension that follows is extraordinary at times.
All tyrannies survive on a diet of rumour, propaganda and lies, and eventually lose touch with reality and fall. It is true that there have been many regimes that have ruthlessly persecuted one section of the community, but what made South Africa unique was that the persecution was sanctioned by, and enshrined in, its national law. It was this that made the apartheid regime especially paranoid and nasty, and it cost them one of the world's finest writers. For Coetzee is that. There is nobody alive who can write in such taut, crystal clear, elegant English and yet exude such creative and emotional energy as this quiet, private intellectual. His books are so concise and so eloquent and so powerful that it is a mystery how he achieves the effect that he does. No wonder that the hypocritical apartheid regime was so scared of him. This and Disgrace are considered his finest works.
The narrator is a lonely magistrate in a frontier town who, though far from the centre of the oppressive state security apparatus, is complicit in its existence by administering its laws (and abusing his position by frequent sexual dalliances with vulnerable women). It doesn't take participation, just indifference, a blind eye. Although always uneasy about his role in the system, he continues as benignly as possible in order to lead a quiet life. It is only on the arrival of a group of interrogators, and having witnessed their arbitrary and brutal methods, that he instinctively rebels. At one point a girl is invited to pick up a rod and beat a prisoner in the yard. `You are depraving these people!' he shouts. He is thus branded an enemy of the state and a `barbarian lover' and committed to prison and subjected to a regime of humiliation and degradation. The breathless tension that follows is extraordinary at times.
All tyrannies survive on a diet of rumour, propaganda and lies, and eventually lose touch with reality and fall. It is true that there have been many regimes that have ruthlessly persecuted one section of the community, but what made South Africa unique was that the persecution was sanctioned by, and enshrined in, its national law. It was this that made the apartheid regime especially paranoid and nasty, and it cost them one of the world's finest writers. For Coetzee is that. There is nobody alive who can write in such taut, crystal clear, elegant English and yet exude such creative and emotional energy as this quiet, private intellectual. His books are so concise and so eloquent and so powerful that it is a mystery how he achieves the effect that he does. No wonder that the hypocritical apartheid regime was so scared of him. This and Disgrace are considered his finest works.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Imagining the barbarian other
This book is a complete masterpiece, for the strong first person narrative alone I would recommend it, the pace and style of writing are totally absorbing and engaging while the... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Lark
A very strange trip to the other side of humanity
This small novel reads slowly and yet is not getting lost in some marshy writing. The point is we do not see at first where it is going. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Jacques COULARDEAU
A study of civilisation
This is one of my all time best books. It's powerful, raw and thought-provoking. In many ways it's a critique of "civilisation", making us question the notion of justice and our... Read more
Published 19 months ago by J. Downs
subverting the language of colonialism
Coetzee's most direct apartheid era novel that attempts to subvert the textual dominance of the dialogue of 'Empire' through a postmodern use of allegory, or rather 'against... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Mr. J. F. Cotterill
Disturbing Story
I found this a disturbing book. It left me slightly depressed. In the same way that Harold Pinter's short play 'One for the Road' did. Read more
Published on 19 May 2010 by D. Crawley
Welcoming the Barbarians
Waiting for the Barbarians is one of Coetzee's early works, bearing the characteristics of his early phases of literary evolution. Read more
Published on 31 Dec 2009 by Pankaj Saxena
Just Who are the Barbarians?
As one embarks upon reading J M Coetzee's short novel, Waiting for the Barbarians one cannot help but wonder who will turn out to be the Barbarians. Read more
Published on 9 Feb 2009 by Herman Norford
Superlative and disturbing
A riveting, delicately written allegory on the injustices of empire and the callous cruelties of war, as told by a clever, mildly altruistic magistrate emotionally embedded in a... Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2009 by Daniel Bor
Universal allegory
The setting for this outstanding book remains without reference to a specific time and place, with only the knowledge of a distant city and the surrounding desert, and items such... Read more
Published on 22 Sep 2008 by Mr. W. C. Burgess
Dull
Like the hero of this tale, I am going to swim against the tide of opinion, and say that I was seriously unimpressed with this book. The theme is what? Read more
Published on 4 Dec 2007 by T. Brearley
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