In the Heart of the Country

Today my father brought home his new bride.

Magda lives on an isolated farm in South Africa with her callous father and their staff, who treat her with disdain. Her psychological state, already precarious, disintegrates when her father takes a black mistress, and a tenuous feudal peace is shattered. In prose rich and vivid, Coetzee re-enacts the colonial experience in the home and in the psyche of one woman, who will not let history overlook her.


J. M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. He lives in Adelaide.


‘A realistic fable, at once stark, exciting and economical.’ New York Times Book Review

‘I have known few authors who can evoke such a wilderness in the heart of a man…Mr. Coetzee knows the elusive terror of Kafka.’ Sunday Times