I went to South Africa with work for the first time a few months ago. We were heavily chaperoned by the production company, who had booked us into a string of fancy pants hotels in Cape Town, Pilanesberg and Johannesburg (the kind where you get free fruit in your room – win!). It was the dream shoot, and I loved every minute of it. Even the getting up at 4am everyday bit…that was good too. Sort of. But despite all the molly coddling and glamorous experience we were treated to, you couldn’t ignore the politics and dare I say ‘racial tension’ after speaking to the locals and some of the crew (this was probably times a bajillion given that the day we landed was the day Mandela died). I felt the same reading Disgrace, as if there was some other feeling bubbling constantly beneath the words.
Set in post-apartheid Cape Town, the novel introduces us to David Lurie, a white professor at the university who is dismissed after (somewhat forcibly) seducing one of his black students. (Forgive me for mentioning race at this stage, but it’s relevant.) David goes to stay with his daughter, who lives on a remote farm running a dog kennel. He occasionally assists Bev at the Animal Shelter putting the dogs to sleep and helps Lucy’s neighbour Petrus with odd jobs. Life bumbles on as David comes to terms with his disgrace, until one day, David and Lucy are attacked at her farm by three black men. David is set on fire, Lucy’s kennel dogs are killed and Lucy is gang-raped – but refuses to press charges. The real strain arises when it becomes clear that Petrus is good friends with Lucy’s attacker, and things might not quite be what they seem.
There’s a lot of tricky racial tension going on here. The novel begins with a white man abusing his power over a black girl, and then a white girl and her father are physically abused by three black men. I’m not going to try and comment on what the author is getting at as I’m far too politically ignorant – but I do find this shift interesting given that the novel is post-apartheid.
After Mandela’s death there were fears that there would be racially driven riots, as revenge for years of black oppression, and the so-called ‘racial power transfer’ seemed to be a very current topic. Although this novel is a bit serious, it is none the less thought-provoking and an incredible bit of writing. If you need any more convincing to give it a go, J.M Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature a few years after its publication.
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