Cries of the Displaced

By ELIZABETH GLEICK

At the heart of South African author J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (Viking; 220 pages; $23.95) lie two rapes--or rather, two scenes of violence, domination and utter disregard for humanity. And although rape is not the true subject of this book, with these parallel violations Coetzee has devised a subtly brilliant commentary on the nature and balance of power in his homeland.

In the opening pages of Disgrace, which has just won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize, David Lurie, a white professor of communications, assesses his life: "He is in good health, his mind is clear... He lives within his income, within his temperament, within his emotional means. Is he happy? By most measurements, yes, he believes he is." And then comes the first crack in the wall of his self-satisfaction: "However, he has not forgotten the last chorus of Oedipus: Call no man happy until he is dead."

Soon Lurie has begun his own tragic fall, becoming obsessed with a student and forcing himself on her. Is it rape? He quickly decides not, but the young woman reports him to the university, and Lurie, fired and discredited, closes up his house and goes to visit his daughter Lucy, who lives on a farm in the Eastern Cape.

During his stay, in a taut and almost unreadable scene, three black men attack Lucy, ransacking her home, shooting her dogs and taking turns with her. "Too many people, too few things," Lurie thinks afterward. "What there is must go into circulation ... Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad."

This may help him preserve his sanity, but Lurie--resolutely blind, like Oedipus, to the less schematic aspects of life--loses everything else. "One gets used to things getting harder," he realizes. "One ceases to be surprised that what used to be as hard as hard can be grows harder yet." Disgrace is a mini-opera without music by a writer at the top of his form. Its bleak vision lingers, shattering any hope of a redemptive state of grace.

--By Elizabeth Gleick