"Compulsively readable... A novel that not only works its spell but makes it impossible for us to lay it aside once we’ve finished reading it... Coetzee’s sentences are coiled springs, and the energy they release would take other writers pages to summon."

--The New Yorker

"Despite the snarled moralities that keep this story dark, light and air seem to push up between the sentences like tiny miracles."

--Newsweek

  At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. When an affair with a student leaves him jobless, shunned by friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife, he retreats to his daughter Lucy’s smallholding. David’s visit becomes an extended stay as he attempts to find meaning in his one remaining relationship. Instead, an incident of unimaginable terror and violence forces father and daughter to confront their strained relationship-and the equally complicated racial complexities of the new South Africa.