Plus one or two other incidents, a storeroom broken into one night, strangers having a prayer meeting on the koppie.’ There are changes in the city, too, with metal detectors at the mall, and the hopeful and welcoming light above the priest’s front door contradicted by the security gate and electric fence. A big land invasion out on the eastern side, closest to the township, fences cut and shacks put up, all in plain view. A farm that once had no need for security measures must now have its gate fastened with multiple locks. There’s certainly an element of chronicle in the book, a notation of changing circumstances and expectations, though it takes second place to family drama. (The last page might clinch it.) Twenty years later, Damon Galgut’s The Promise has followed this trajectory, with a Booker-shortlisted family narrative that’s also in two minds about its status as a document of historic social change. Coetzee’s Booker Prize-winning Disgrace, in which a narrative of disintegration and one of reconstruction were superimposed on each other, leaving it to the reader to decide which was the lower layer. T he appetite for an authoritative portrait of the new South Africa was both catered to and resisted by J.M.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |