Author
Disgrace
Disgrace follows David Lurie, a middle-aged Cape Town literature professor whose career ends after he abuses his position with a student and refuses to perform the contrition his university expects. He retreats to his daughter Lucy's smallholding in the Eastern Cape, where a violent attack changes both their lives and exposes how far the old order of power has shifted in post-apartheid South Africa. Coetzee's spare, unsettling story examines shame, privilege, desire, and responsibility without offering easy moral comfort. It won the 1999 Booker Prize and is one of the most discussed Booker Prize books of its era. As literary fiction, it rewards slow reading and still provokes strong disagreement.