Although abroad Disgrace was applauded for its brutal honesty, South Africa's political realm was not as receptive. Although race is a current throughout these works, post-apartheid literature foregrounds the themes of poverty, crime, bloodshed, homosexuality, and the AIDS epidemic. What distinguishes post-apartheid literature from apartheid literature is primarily its thematic focus. While both black and white authors, such as Nadine Gordimer, Alan Paton, and J.M Coetzee himself, played a major role in bringing apartheid to global attention decades earlier, many of these same authors were responsible for bringing global attention to the condition of South Africa after apartheid as well. Crime, poverty, and rape fill the landscape of Salem, and Lurie and his daughter must salvage what they can of their relationship after violence strikes.Īs the winner of the Booker prize, Disgrace finds a honored place within the genre of post-apartheid literature. Lurie, a specialist in Romantic literature, is catapulted into a rural South Africa much different from the scenes described in Wordsworth. Fired from his position in Cape Town because of sexual misconduct with a student, the professor goes to live with his daughter, Lucy. Coetzee enters intimately into the mind of a twice-divorced academic, David Lurie, as he wrestles with the impediments that societal standards place on the fulfillment of his sexual desire.
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