Disgrace

South Africa, the end of the nineties. Memories of apartheid are still fresh, and the new reality hasn’t fully formed yet—but Professor David Lurie believes his life has fallen into place. Everything changes in a single moment, though, when Lurie decides to seduce a student. An unequal love affair ends with Lurie’s total disgrace: he is banned from academic life and fired from the university. The professor has no choice but to leave and live with his daughter on a remote farm, where he must face another dishonor—in all its forms…

The novel “Disgrace” is a clear, tense exploration of what shame is for every person, and how the conditions under which we live shape and reshape this very concept every hour. In 1999, for “Disgrace,” J. M. Coetzee received the Booker Prize.