Disgrace: A Novel. Winner of the Booker Prize 1999 and of the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2000, Best Book - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940, John Michael Coetzee studied first at Cape Town and later at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in literature. In 1972 he returned to South Africa and joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town. His works of fiction include Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won South Africa’s highest literary honor, the Central News Agency Literary Award, and theLife and Times of Michael K., for which Coetzee was awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. He has also published a memoir,Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life, and several essays collections. He has won many other literary prizes including the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize and TheIrish Times International Fiction Prize. In 1999 he again won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize forDisgrace, becoming the first author to win the award twice in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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ONE
FOR. A MAN of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind,solved the problem of sex rather well. On Thursday afternoons hedrives to Green Point. Punctually at two p.m. he presses the buzzerat the entrance to Windsor Mansions, speaks his name, and enters.Waiting for him at the door of No. II3 is Soraya. He goes straightthrough to the bedroom, which is pleasant-smelling and softly lit,and undresses. Soraya emerges from the bathroom, drops her robe,slides into bed beside him. 'Have you missed me?' she asks. 'I missyou all the time,' he replies. He strokes her honey-brown body,unmarked by the sun; he stretches her out, kisses her breasts; theymake love.

Soraya is tall and slim, with long black hair and dark, liquid eyes.Technically he is old enough to be her father; but then,technically, one can be a father at twelve. He has been on herbooks for over a year; he finds her entirely satisfactory. In thedesert of the week Thursday has become an oasis of luxe et velupté .

In bed Soraya is not effusive. Her temperament is in fact ratherquiet, quiet and docile. In her general opinions she is surprisinglymoralistic. She is offended by tourists who bare their breasts('udders', she calls them) on public beaches; she thinks vagabondsshould be rounded up and put to work sweeping the streets. How she reconciles her opinions with her line of business he does not ask.

Because he takes pleasure in her, because his pleasure isunfailing, an affection has grown up in him for her. To somedegree, he believes, this affection is reciprocated. Affection maynot be love, but it is at least its cousin. Given their unpromisingbeginnings, they have been lucky, the two of them: he to havefound her, she to have found him.

His sentiments are, he is aware, complacent, even uxorious.Nevertheless he does not cease to hold to them.

For a ninety-minute session he pays her R4oo, of which halfgoes to Discreet Escorts. It seems a pity that Discreet Escortsshould get so much. But they own No. II3 and other flats inWindsor Mansions; in a sense they own Soraya too, this part ofher, this function.

He has toyed with the idea of asking her to see him in her owntime. He would like to spend an evening with her, perhaps even awhole night. But not the morning after. He knows too muchabout himself to subject her to a morning after, when he will becold, surly, impatient to be alone.

That is his temperament. His temperament is not going to change,he is too old for that. His temperament is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body.

Follow your temperament. It is not a philosophy, he would notdignity it with that name. It is a rule, like the Rule of St Benedict.He is in good health, his mind is clear. By profession he is, orhas been, a scholar, and scholarship still engages, intermittently, thecore of him. He lives within his income, within his temperament,within his emotional means. Is he happy? By most measurements,yes, he believes he is. However, he has not forgotten the lastchorus of Oedipus : Call no man happy until he is dead.

In the field of sex his temperament, though intense, has neverbeen passionate. Were he to choose a totem, it would be the snake.Intercourse between Soraya and himself must be, he imagines, rather like the copulation of snakes: lengthy, absorbed, but ratherabstract, rather dry, even at its hottest.

Is Soraya's totem the snake too? No doubt with other men shebecomes another woman: lu donna é mobile . Yet at the level oftemperament her affinity with him can surely not be feigned.Though by occupation she is a loose woman he trusts her,within limits. During their sessions he speaks to her with a certainfreedom, even on occasion unburdens himself She knows the factsof his life. She has heard the stories of his two marriages, knowsabout his daughter and his daughter's ups and downs. She knowsmany of his opinions.

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