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Waiting for the Barbarians

J. M. Coetzee

1

award won

14

score

#374 of 8,085 books · #192 in Fiction

Won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1980). Also shortlisted or longlisted for 1 other award.

For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state. J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.

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Publisher
Penguin Books
ISBN-13
9780140061109
Genre
Fiction
Topics
Colonialism and oppressionComplicity and moral conscienceEmpire and war

Awards

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