Disgrace
by J.M. Coetzee
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Reading Club Session: 2 May 2019
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Set in post-apartheid South Africa, J. M. Coetzee’s novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced, 52-year-old professor of communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University. Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. But when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced.
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Questions for discussion
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Shmoop reading guide to Disgrace
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J. M. Coetzee
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 the LIFE 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 The Irish Times International Fiction Prize. In 1999, he again won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for DISGRACE, becoming the first author to win the award twice in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Interview with the author
Disgrace: The film
J. M. Coetzee