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Published1999
Pages258
Open Library3.7 / 5
Club average—

Excerpt

At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless, shunned by his friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife. He retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding, where a brief visit becomes an extended stay as he tries to find meaning from the one remaining relationship. David attempts to relate to Lucy and to a society with new racial complexities are disrupted by an afternoon of violence that shakes all of his beliefs and threatens to destroy his daughter. In this wry, visceral, yet strangely tender novel, Coetzee once again tells "truths [that] cut to the bone" (The New York Times Book Review).

Literary origin

Country whose literature this title belongs to, based on author tradition —not necessarily where the story is set.

  • South Africa

Topics from Open Library

Subjects

  • abortion
  • euthanasia
  • animal shelters
  • agoraphobia
  • Domestic fiction
  • Farm life
  • Farm life in fiction
  • Fathers and daughters
  • Fathers and daughters in fiction
  • Fiction

People

  • David Lurie
  • Lucy Lurie
  • Bev Shaw
  • Petrus
  • Pollux
  • Melanie Isaacs

Times & places

  • 1994-
  • xian dai
Added to BBRC

Oct 13, 2026

Catalog slug

disgrace

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