Disgrace

Booker prize winner two times around, J. M Coetzee’s book “Disgrace” (which fetched him the Booker the second time); was to me a disgrace. It talks about defeat. The books end on a defeat. Aren’t we doing it several times in real life- accepting defeat? The book left me feeling disgraced. It talks about a white woman who is a lesbian who lives in an area where the population save her is black. On how she is raped because she is white and because her neighbor wants her share of the land. On how she doesn’t complain to the police but goes over to her neighbor and asks him to marry her; doing exactly what he wanted her to- accepting defeat. I found the book ‘Disgraceful’! When I talked about this to a journalist who works in France, he smiled at me and said; “But isn’t that what the book is about? Disgrace?”

Would I have done that? Taken a beating and not out on a fight?

The question is not about winning. It’s that you don’t lose until you stop fighting….