J.M.Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians

J.M.Coetzee's, "Waiting for the Barbarians" is a gripping novel about a magistrate who witnesses the brutality of the visiting Colonel Joll, a representative of the Empire. The Empire fears an attack by the Barbarians and orders the Colonel to find its enemies . The latter are infact harmless pastoral people who have been relegated to a life in the mountains because of the enroachment by the settlers. The Magistrate's cozy world is shaken by the Colonel's excessive use of force during the interrogation of the suspects. Unable to ignore the torture meted out to his people, the magistrate expresses his distaste to the Colonel.

"...how do u eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations in the structure of the eyelid?"

However, the Magistrate's fate is sealed when he decides to return a barbarian girl back to her people. The girl, tortured by Joll and left to beg on the streets, is taken in by the Magistrate who nurses her back to health. The relationship between the two involves a strange cleansing ritual, perhaps a cleansing of the conscience or of those that act without one. Upon his return, the Magistrate is found guilty and stripped of his position. Humiliated and tortured, he refuses to accept the charges against him and fights for a trial.

The narration flows with a sense of detachment, which is quite surprising given the circumstances. There are no heroes or villains in this story. It is an attempt to understand the human mind that does not understand reason or logic. The Magistrate is a simple man whose conscience is put to the test by a system that offers no compunction for its acts.

It is a situation that most of us might find ourselves in. But the question is, ‘how far are we willing to go to do what is right?” ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’, is tragically beautiful, makes your stomach cringe and questions the very depth of your soul. To sum up- ‘A great find and a must read’.