 First edition (South Africa) | |
| Author | J. M. Coetzee |
|---|---|
| Country | South Africa |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Ravan Press (SA) Secker and Warburg (UK) |
Publication date | 18 April 1974. [1] |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0-86975-035-6 |
| OCLC | 39714684 |
Dusklands (1974) is the debut novel by J. M. Coetzee, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. The novel consists of two separate stories, "The Vietnam Project" and "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee."
The first story, "The Vietnam Project", relates the gradual descent into insanity of its protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a U.S. government agency responsible for the psychological warfare in the Vietnam War. However, his work on mythography and psychological operations is taking a heavy toll on him; his fall culminates in him stabbing his own son, Martin.
The second story, "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee", which takes place in the 18th century, is an account of a hunting expedition into the then "unexplored" interior of South Africa. After crossing the Orange River, Jacobus meets with a Namaqua tribe to trade, but suddenly falls ill. He is attended to by the tribe and gradually recovers, only to get into a fight for which he is expelled from the village. His last slave dying on the way home, he returns alone and later organises a punitive expedition against the Namaqua. The narrative concludes with his execution of the slaves that deserted him on the previous journey and the massacre of the tribe.
Coetzee began working on the novel whilst he lived in London. He would visit the British Museum and research accounts of early explorers and travellers within South Africa. When he moved to Texas in the late 1960s he continued to research the subject, but still had not begun writing. Coetzee began writing the novel when he moved to Buffalo, New York, in January 1970. The novel stemmed out of a New Year's resolution to "stop thinking and planning and actually start writing". [2]
According to the literary critic Dominic Head, who has published two book-length studies on Coetzee, [3] "it has become a truism in criticism of Coetzee that Dusklands introduces a new postmodernist strain in the novel from South Africa." [4] From the time of its initial publication in 1974, it has generally garnered positive responses from readers and critics, many of whom admire its presentation and critique of the violence inherent in the colonialist and imperialist mentality of the Western world. On the other hand, those who've "found fault with Dusklands have tended to concentrate on the obliquity of the book's method: Coetzee is condemned for failing to offer a more direct rejection of the colonial violence he represents." [5]
When Per Wästberg delivered the Presentation Speech at the 2003 Nobel Prize award ceremony, he singled out Dusklands in his talk:
The myth of the survivor on a desert island is the only story there is, J. M. Coetzee once said. Several of his books treat similar solitudes. Is it possible to stand outside history? Does freedom from the diktat of authority exist? "I don't like accomplices. God, let me be alone," says [the protagonist] Jacobus Coetzee in the first novel, Dusklands, rejoicing in being abandoned. But he remains the tool of history, and what compels the natives to take him seriously is his victorious violence. He does, however, ask himself whether the blacks populate a wonderful world closed to his own senses: "Perhaps I have killed something of inestimable value." [6]
Dusklands is seen in the movie G.I. Jane , being read by Command Master Chief John James Urgayle (portrayed by actor Viggo Mortensen). [7]
Patrick Victor Martindale White was a British-born Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987.
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John Maxwell Coetzee FRSL OMG is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the CNA Literary Award (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates.
Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. It won the Booker Prize. The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its publication.
Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries, originating from all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especially questions relating to the political and cultural independence of formerly subjugated people, and themes such as racialism and colonialism. A range of literary theory has evolved around the subject. It addresses the role of literature in perpetuating and challenging what postcolonial critic Edward Said refers to as cultural imperialism.
Charles Richard Johnson is an American scholar and the author of novels, short stories, screen-and-teleplays, and essays, most often with a philosophical orientation. Johnson has directly addressed the issues of black life in America in novels such as Dreamer and Middle Passage. Johnson was born in 1948 in Evanston, Illinois, and spent most of his career at the University of Washington in Seattle.
African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was a great period of flowering in literature and the arts, influenced both by writers who came North in the Great Migration and those who were immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands. African American writers have been recognized by the highest awards, including the Nobel Prize given to Toni Morrison in 1993. Among the themes and issues explored in this literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American society, African American culture, racism, slavery, and social equality. African-American writing has tended to incorporate oral forms, such as spirituals, sermons, gospel music, blues, or rap.
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African literature is literature from Africa, either oral ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings."
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South African literature is the literature of South Africa, which has 11 national languages: Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Pedi, Tswana, Venda, Swazi, Tsonga and Ndebele.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Elleke Boehmer, FRSL, FRHistS is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and a Professorial Governing Body Fellow at Wolfson College. She is an acclaimed novelist and a founding figure in the field of Postcolonial Studies, internationally recognised for her research in colonial and postcolonial literature and theory. Her main areas of interest include the literature of empire and resistance to empire; sub-Saharan African and South Asian literatures; modernism; migration and diaspora; feminism, masculinity, and identity; nationalism; terrorism; J. M. Coetzee, Katherine Mansfield, and Nelson Mandela; and life writing.
Foe is a 1986 novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway. Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, unfolded as Barton's narrative while in England attempting to convince the writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Focused primarily on themes of language and power, the novel was the subject of criticism in South Africa, where it was regarded as politically irrelevant on its release. Coetzee revisited the composition of Robinson Crusoe in 2003 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
Carl Nixon is a New Zealand novelist, short story writer and playwright. He has written five novels and a number of original plays which have been performed throughout New Zealand, as well as adapting both Lloyd Jones' novel The Book of Fame and Nobel prize winner J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace for the stage.
The Lives of Animals (1999) is a metafictional novella about animal rights by the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. The work is introduced by Amy Gutmann and followed by a collection of responses by Marjorie Garber, Peter Singer, Wendy Doniger and Barbara Smuts. It was published by Princeton University Press as part of its Human Values series.
J. M. Coetzee is a South African-born novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He has also won the Booker Prize twice, the Jerusalem Prize, CNA Prize (thrice), the Prix Femina étranger, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, as well as many other awards and honours, and he holds a number of honorary doctorates and is one of the most acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language.
The 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the South African novelist John Maxwell Coetzee, better known simply as J. M. Coetzee, "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider." He is the fourth African writer to be so honoured and the second South African after Nadine Gordimer in 1991.
The 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the South African activist and writer Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity." She is the 7th female and first South African recipient of the prize followed by J. M. Coetzee in 2003.
The 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Australian writer Patrick White (1912–1990) "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature." He is the first and the only Australian recipient of the prize.
On 18 April 1974 the first printing of Dusklands appeared in hardback, with a press release by Randall praising the novel as 'as one of the most important works of literature to have been written in South Africa'. The retail price was R4.80. The blurb contains a quotation from Jonathan Crewe's essay which was soon to appear in "Contrast": Dusklands is a very remarkable first book, written with a fastidiousness and power that are rare on the South African literary scene, or any literary scene.