Dusklands
Dusklands (1974) is the first book by J. M. Coetzee, who later won the South African Nobel Prize for Literature . The subject of the book is the illustration and critical treatment of the violence of the colonialists and imperialists in the Western world .
The book consists of two stories of about the same length that are thematically linked. The first, The Vietnam Project , is about the gradual descent into madness of the protagonist Eugene Dawn. Eugene works for a US government agency responsible for mental health care during the Vietnam War . However, his work on mythography and his psychological activities occupy him too much; his downfall reaches its climax when he stabs his son Martin. The first-person narrator gives a report and mentions Coetzee several times, who is supposed to publish the report and whom he does not trust.
The second story, The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee , set in the 18th century, depicts a hunting expedition into the "undiscovered" hinterland of South Africa. After crossing the Orange , Jacobus Coetzee and his slaves meet the Nama tribe with whom he trades, but suddenly falls ill. The Nama take care of him and he is slowly recovering. But it comes to a fight for which he is expelled from the village. Only his most loyal slave accompanies him on his way back, but dies on the way, so that Coetzee continues his way back alone. He later organized a punitive expedition against the Nama. The narrative ends with the murder of his slaves who abandoned him on the previous trip and the murder of the tribe. The narration claims to be the translation of a diary from Dutch and some of Coetzee's father's remarks from Afrikaans .
First editions
The book was published in 1974 by Ravan Press in Johannesburg . In the United Kingdom, the book was published in 1982 by Martin Secker & Warburg .
Others
There is no German translation of the novel.
Individual evidence
- ^ Allan Gardiner : JM Coetzee's "Dusklands": colonial encounters of the Robinsonian kind. tandfonline.com (English), accessed September 19, 2017
- ^ JM Coetzee: Dusklands. Penguin, London 1983, ISBN 0-14-007114-8 , imprint.