Books: Madness and misery on the farm

Lilian Pizzichini
Sunday 14 March 1999 00:02 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

In the Heart of the Country

by J M Coetzee

Vintage pounds 6.99

J M Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1940, and has devoted much of his writing career to exploring what it means to be part of the English diaspora in an apartheid state. This plunges him straight into the issue of race, and, more significantly perhaps, into questions of identity. The English grouping in South Africa has no claims to ethnic purity - everyone is implicated in the morass of miscegenation and prejudice. , which won the CNA Prize, the premier South African literary award, in 1977, typifies his approach to the deadweight of colonialism and its baggage of reciprocal oppression.

His narrator, Magda, is trapped on an isolated sheep farm with only her harsh, unloving father for companionship. Their black odd-job man takes a wife, and it is not long before "Baas" has coerced her into his bed. This desperate lurch across the racial divide marks the end of a tenuous feudal peace, and sends Magda freefalling into delirium, insatiable lust and violent fantasies. Her word is all we have to go by; fantasies mingle with memory as the secrets that burden her gradually emerge. The intensity of Magda's desire for recognition from a people and landscape that pay her no heed is overwhelming. Yet throughout, Coetzee maintains a precision in his descriptions of place and states of mind that cuts through her feverish narration. Two years ago, he published a memoir of his childhood (Boyhood, Secker & Warburg) in which he described his mother's great unhappiness, her cloying affection for her only son, and the resentment he felt towards her. Her loneliness and frustration are also felt by Magda, whose craving for love destroys her. Coetzee brilliantly reproduces the claustrophobia and soul-destroying routine of farm life in Magda's obsessive detailing of textures, tastes and household tasks. As a spinster, she is marginalised, and her bloody act of revenge is emblematic of a revolt against the society that has no use for her. But Coetzee goes further than that. The fall- out from Magda's crazed action is the elimination of any kind of hierarchy on the farm. The line is blurred between mistress and servant, black and white, man and woman, and the ensuing struggle for power is mesmeric in its terrifying intensity. In just his second novel, Coetzee created a fable about what Andre Brink called "man's earthly anguish and longing for salvation".

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in