Disgrace - J M Coetzee (Vintage) *** The '99 Booker prize winner, it must have been a lean year. David Lurie is a language professor at Cape Town University, divorced and living alone he is finding it hard to maintain normal relationships with women. He visits a call girl on a regular basis, but he mistakes her professional stance for caring and approaches her outside of their paid meeting time, she snubs him. He begins a relationship with a female student in his class which rapidly blurs the distinction between consensual and non-consensual, she reports him and in the ensuing furore he loses his job. He retreats to his daughters smallholding in the Eastern Cape and tries to rebuild his life in a simpler fashion, but he is subjected to a frightening attack and his daughter is raped by three prowlers. In the aftermath of the rape he tries to come to terms with his daughters acceptance of what has happened, and with her relationship with the neighbouring farmer who he is convinced is involved. His forceful manner with his daughter sours their relationship and he is forced to leave. At the end of the book he is still alone, but trying hard to regain the trust of his child. I was disappointed that Coetzee's protagonist couldn't philosophise over his treatment of the student in the same manner in which he does over the violation of his daughter, he finds no parallel between the two events at all. 'Disgrace' also examines the changing power structure in rural South Africa, where a single white, female farmer gradually finds she has no power, respect or social standing at all, and must eventually give up nearly all she has to remain under the tacit protection of her black neighbour. An interesting novel, but for me it left too many stones unturned.