Waiting for the Barbarians

Name: Waiting for the Barbarians
Author: J.M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee · 1980

An unnamed Empire, an unnamed Magistrate, and the torture of "barbarians" who may pose no actual threat. Coetzee's 1980 allegory applies to every empire that has ever justified atrocity through security. The Magistrate's complicity and then resistance is the most honest portrait of the liberal confronting state violence in contemporary fiction.

The case against

on the middle section
“the story also hits inertia half way through the book”
four stars · a book blog
on the magistrate’s conduct
“with little rumination on the arbitrary authority in which he does”
a book blog
on the page length
“It is a dense novel, despite its short page length”
a Substack review
on the magistrate’s thoughts
“sentences are longer and less focused and my own train of thought started to wander”
a book blog