Summary & Study Guide Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee Kindle Edition

Taut, spare and beautifully written. This book explores race and family relations in South Africa through the depiction of memorable characters. It has also been made into a very good movie

Buyer beware. My fault for not reading the blurb properly. I thought this was the actual book, which, by the way is not available on Kindle. That's bizarre in itself, the study guide but no book? It won the Booker prize and most of his other books are there, so why not this? I finally bought a real book through EBay and thoroughly enjoyed it. The movie is excellent too.

J M Coetzee speaks his mind on Israel28 May 2016The South African novelist and Nobel-laureate J M Coetzee rarely makes public statements, so it is great to hear him speaking out on Palestine on Thursday night in Ramallah at the close of this year’s Palfest literature festival.Observing that it is not “a productive step” to compare Israel’s policies with those of apartheid South Africa, because it “diverts one into an inflamed, semantic wrangle”, he continues:“Apartheid was a system of enforced segregation based on race or ethnicity put in place by an exclusive self-defined group in order to consolidate a colonial conquest, in particular to cement its hold on the land and its natural resources.“To speak of Jerusalem and the West Bank, we see a system of enforced segregation based on religion and ethnicity put in place by an exclusive self-defined group to consolidate a colonial conquest, in particular to maintain, and indeed extend, its hold on the land and its natural resources.“Draw your own conclusions.”The American Heritage Dictionary,Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1985.SegregateTo separate or isolate from others or from a main body or group.To impose the separation of (race or class) from the rest of society.To practice a policy of racial segregation.In genetics, to undergo genetic segregation.Segregative.Segregator.SegregationThe act or process of segregation.The policy and practice of imposing the social separation of races as in schools, housing and industry, especially discriminatory practices against non-whites in a predominantly white society.A colonial conquest.Colony.A group of emigrants or their descendants who settle in a distant land but remain subject to or intimately connected with the parent country.A region politically controlled by a distant country; dependency.A group of people with the same interests or ethnic origin concentrated in a particular area: the American colony in Paris.To colonize.To cultivate.As you may see our Nobel Prize winner is asking the readers and listeners to draw their own conclusions while pushing them to endorse his erroneous conclusion that there is a sort of apartheid in the former British Palestine. The trickster says that the South African apartheid was (and is) was based on race and ethnicity while the “Palestinian apartheid” is based on religion and ethnicity. It is patently false since the majority of Jews are not observant (in fact, Judaism is the most atheistic religion) and a Muslim man was a president of Israel. Muslim and Christian Arabic speakers prefer the State of Israel above all. There are numerous examples of their success within a Jewish-British system in the Holy Land.The Coetzee’s “ethnicity” argument is ridiculous hitherto Muslims in Palestine display the variety of races, same with Jews and Christians.There is a gamut of Jewish tribes, clans and colors of skin.J. M. Coetzee must learn once and for all that Arabs control the land in Palestine leaving to the Hebrew groups only 15% of the territory of the former British Mandate including Trans-Jordan and Cis-Jordan.He must finally understand that the power of Israel and Jordan is not the natural resources but people resources.There is no segregation in Jerusalem and its entire kingdoms. However, the anti-terrorist measures must be in force until the new generations of Arabs internalize that they have to forget their belligerency to the Hebrew Republic. Their rulers and the majority of citizens are happier now while the peace in the Palestinian State of Israel and the Palestinian Kingdom of Jordan is already bringing both stability and prosperity. Yet, the PalFest organizers foment war.And Mr. Coetzee must keep his mouth shut; he lives in the land taken from the aborigines. Let him go back, to his ancestors’ land in Europe. He already left the South Africa, thank you.