Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M.Coetzee

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M.Coetzee

 %.... Introduction

John Maxwell Coetzee is a novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.  He writes many novels. It was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th century and won both the James Tait Black Memorial prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction. It is first published in 1960. His first work of fiction was Dusklands written in 1974.The second one is Waiting for Barbarian in 1980. "Waiting for the Barbarians" is a novel published in 1980. “Waiting for the Barbarians” is about morality and it deals with human cruelty. The title is from a tone from the Greek post “Constantine P. Cavafy”. The story was about imaginary Empire.

 %.....Waiting for the Barbarians 

Waiting for the Barbarians Coetzee often writes about racism and apartheid. This book is no exception. It is a story about a distant settlement at an unknown time. The settlement is being run by the Magistrate. They have for years lived a peaceful life in harmony with the surrounding natives. 

               One day Colonel Joll from the Third Bureau arrives to the settlement with orders from the Empire. The natives— known as barbarians to the Empire—are recognized as a threat. Colonel Joll and his men have come to distinguish that threat. Joll's interrogation methods are cruel and the natives living close to the settlement are imprisoned and tortured.

The people living in the settlement are becoming increasingly convinced that the barbarians are in fact a threat, and that a war has to be fought. They start living in fear and they feel that it is no longer safe to leave the settlement. 

The one person who feels sympathy for the barbarians and objects to how they are being treated is the Magistrate. He is soon seen as a traitor when he helps a young woman back to her native people and is himself thrown in jail.