ISBN: 9780099465935    Publisher: Random House Year of publishing: 2004     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 176        Language: English

For decades the Magistrate has run the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement, ignoring the impending war between the barbarians and the Empire, whose servant he is. But when the interrogation experts arrive, he is jolted into sympathy with the victims and into a quixotic act of rebellion which lands him in prison, branded as an enemy of the state. Waiting for the Barbarians is an allegory of oppressor and oppressed. Not just a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times, the Magistrate is an analogue of all men living in complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.
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J M Coetzee's work includes 'Waiting For The Barbarians', 'Life & Times of Michael 'K', Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life', 'Youth', 'Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello' and, most recently, 'Slow Man'. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
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