Disgrace (1999) by J.M. Coetzee is a powerful novel set in post-apartheid South Africa. It follows David Lurie, a disgraced English professor who is forced to leave his university after a scandal involving a student. Seeking refuge, he goes to live with his daughter Lucy on her rural farm, where both their lives are violently disrupted by a brutal attack. As David grapples with the fallout—his daughter’s refusal to seek justice, her decision to keep a child conceived through rape, and her alliance with a possibly complicit neighbor—the novel explores themes of power, race, gender, and redemption in a changing South African society. Disgrace won the Booker Prize and was adapted into a 2008 film starring John Malkovich.
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