J.M. Coetzee

At an isolated frontier outpost, a colonial magistrate suffers a crisis of conscience when an army colonel arrives looking to interrogate the locals about an impending uprising, using cruel tactics that horrify the magistrate.

Disgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter. After having an affair with a student, he moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.

A South African spinster murders her father after he rapes the wife of the black foreman for his plantation.

In a new land where everyone receives a new name and begins again without a past, Simón takes responsibility for David, a child he met on the crossing to a new life. Driven by an inexplicable conviction, he sets out to find the boy’s mother despite the fact David remembers nothing about her. When he recognizes Inés as the right woman, she accepts the role and an unlikely bond forms between them. While society imposes rules and treats difference as a threat, David resists being shaped and stands for imagination and freedom.

Elizabeth Costello is invited to Appleton College's annual literary seminar as a guest lecturer. Despite her stature as a celebrated novelist, she opts not to give lectures on literature or writing, but on animal cruelty.