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Again another read which is somewhere between a pick and so-so. I liked the book and the underlying theme but the fetishisation of the native girl (it is a work addressing a colony in an unnamed location) was kinda weird. But it references the power and arrogance of the Empire and what happens to those who don‘t comply - even if it‘s their own people.

A difficult book, not to read or understand but to sit with its contents and hold the images in thought. Coetzee has us consider all the ways a human, and humanity, can experience torture. Are we part of an Empire for which torture is a tool? Are we ignoring that? What if the Empire moves its torture practices to the lot next door? At what cost do we continue to ignore? How does an individual become a torturer?

#bookspin for June

A dark yet compelling book about oppressors and oppressed, Coetzee raises questions about justice and the human need to make some meaning of life. The scope of this short book is very wide and leaves the reader with questions to ask and answer, ideas to ponder over, plumbing the depths of human nature, loss and pain, resilience and what it means to be stripped down to the bare bones of existence.

An exceedingly poetic examination of the moral hypocrisy of imperialism, and the use of the “other” to define a cultural identity. I‘ll admit - some of the specific imagery and metaphors that were invoked were probably lost on me, but the broad themes were clear and stirring.

Shoring up the wonderful new holes in my 20th-Century #Classics Display! This one has really taken off and blown me away with how many books are getting borrowed off of it! 😁👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Have you read any of these?

#LitsyLovesLibraries #MrBooksDisplays

Too often throughout history, one group of people will decide they‘re better than another group of people for some arbitrary reason. This book explores that irony, since the “civilized” group usually turns out to be the real barbarians. How relevant and timely this book remains. How can one man fight the Empire? I don‘t know, but it shouldn‘t stop us from trying.
130/1,001 #1001Books

“How do you eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations in the structure of the eyelid?”

I liked it. I like Coetzee's prose. There is much there that I am sure I missed

Currently reading Waiting for the Barbarians. Still have #infinitejestbuddyread to go and would like to finish these in May.

Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

Quite different strategies for cover art, which is my excuse for forgetting I already owned it... #duplicates

Coetzee has a writing style that is BEYOND. The best summation of how excellent this was is that for next quarter I'm trying to take a class solely on Coetzee 🍃

Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.

what happened when I went to the second hand bookshop and forgot to check my www.librarything.com account!