DISGRACE

220 pp., paperback, Reprint, London, (1999) 2024

Winner of the 1999 Booker Prize.

David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, teaches Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town. When an impulsive affair with a student sours, he is summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt but refusing to repent publicly, he resigns and withdraws to his daughter's isolated smallholding.

"By this late point in the century the journey to a heart of narrative darkness has become a safe literary destination, almost a cliche. Disgrace goes beyond this to explore the furthest reaches of what it means to be human; it is at the frontier of world literature" Geoff Dyer, Sunday Telegraph

"A masterpiece... perhaps the best novel to carry off the Booker in a decade" Boyd Tonkin, Independent