The Star book of horror No

Coetzee is a master of putting very complex stories into simple packagings. This book is very deep, yet the story is simple: a magistrate of a wild outpost of an empire leads an easy life in peace until a colonel in the army comes by, which set off a number of events that ultimately put the magistrate against the empire. Coetzee writes in a very unique manner. Aside from the colonel (Joll), no one has a name in the book,... Read Full Review

In his book "Waiting For The Barbarians" Coetzee gives us another timeless window into a soul. Here Coetzee depicts the frivolous and capricious nature of the continuing war machine in the backdrop of 1970's South Africa. The book, in its nature was very reminiscent of George Orwell, in such tales as "Shooting An Elephant" where the life of a civil servant and the attrocities he must perform and witness shape the personality... Read Full Review

This is the third book I have read by Coetzee and each time I venture into his world, I am surprised at how he is able to represent complicated themes in so simple a story. In this novel, a magistrate rules his town peacefully until Colonal Joll comes and insists that the barbarians are a dangerous group that need to be quelled immediately. He is a wicked man who takes his weakness and manipulates it into cruelty towards... Read Full Review

From previous reviews on this page I'm convinced many readers did not read the same novel I did. As a South African I might have had priviledged access to a state of mind, but this novel soars above even such limitations. It is a masterpiece. It has haunted me with its power and subtlety for years. I first read it as a student, and have re-visited it twice since. Few books have affected me in quite the same way. Sometimes... Read Full Review

Set in a landscape which moves almost unnoticably from what could be the Mediterranean, to desert, to tundra, to unrecognizable terrains, this idiosyncratic book allows an unusually independent view of patterns of human behaviour. It shows how often we depend for our understanding of the world on presumptions unconsciously signified in the labels we give to different times, places and individuals' positions within society... Read Full Review