Disgrace
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Michael Cumpsty
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By:
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J. M. Coetzee
About this listen
Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 1999
Set in post-apartheid South Africa, Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee's searing novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced 52-year-old professor of communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University.
Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. But when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced.
Lurie pursues his relationship with the young Melanie - whom he describes as having hips "as slim as a 12-year-old's" - obsessively and narcissistically, ignoring, on one occasion, her wish not to have sex. When Melanie and her father lodge a complaint against him, Lurie is brought before an academic committee where he admits he is guilty of all the charges but refuses to express any repentance for his acts. In the furor of the scandal, jeered at by students, threatened by Melanie's boyfriend, ridiculed by his ex-wife, Lurie is forced to resign and flees Cape Town for his daughter Lucy's small holding in the country.
Written with the austere clarity that has made J. M. Coetzee the winner of two Booker Prizes, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes, with unforgettable, at times almost unbearable, vividness the plight of a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.
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Critic reviews
“Disgrace is not a hard or obscure book - it is, among other things, compulsively readable - but what it may well be is an authentically spiritual document, a lament for the soul of a disgraced century.” (The New Yorker)
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- By: Helen Oyeyemi
- Narrated by: Carol Boyd
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently....
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Door
- By: Magda Szabó, Len Rix - translator
- Narrated by: Siân Thomas
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Intense, brilliant and moving, The Door is a compelling story about the relationship between two women of opposing backgrounds and personalities: one, an intellectual and writer; the other, her housekeeper, a mysterious, elderly woman who sets her own rules and abjures religion, education, pretense and any kind of authority. Beneath this hardened exterior of Emerence lies a painful story that must be concealed.
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Challenging, but an engrossing, literary work.
- By Earnest on 09-05-17
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The Vagrants
- By: Yiyun Li
- Narrated by: Jackie Chung
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Yiyun Li is the winner of the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Vagrants, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance.
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Lovely prose, good story, deadly narration
- By Athene on 05-10-13
By: Yiyun Li
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The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
- By: Fay Weldon
- Narrated by: Gemma Dawson
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In New York Magazine, Rhoda Koenig calls The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, "...a novel of blazingly hot revenge, one that amply illustrates the saying about heaven having no rage like love turned to hate, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
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Sweet, brutal, and over the top revenge!!
- By Wayne on 04-10-17
By: Fay Weldon
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The Damnation Game
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Marty Strauss, a gambling addict recently released from prison, is hired to be the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job proves more complicated and dangerous than he thought, however, as Marty soon gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, his daughter (who is a heroin addict), and a devilish man named Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a Faustian bargain many years earlier, during World War II.
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Damned If You Do
- By Wag The Fox on 04-05-14
By: Clive Barker
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Winter Journey
- By: Diane Armstrong
- Narrated by: Deidre Rubenstein
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
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Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.
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Historical Story Marred by Unnecessary Fluff
- By Debbie on 11-30-15
By: Diane Armstrong
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Asylum
- By: Patrick McGrath
- Narrated by: Sir Ian McKellen
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
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In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting - a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage. But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues -a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.
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So enjoyed this book!
- By Mebythesea on 10-07-08
By: Patrick McGrath
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The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
- A Novel
- By: Deborah Moggach
- Narrated by: Juliet Mills
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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When Ravi Kapoor, an overworked London doctor, reaches the breaking point with his difficult father-in-law, he asks his wife: “Can’t we just send him away somewhere? Somewhere far, far away.” His prayer is seemingly answered when Ravi’s entrepreneurial cousin sets up a retirement home in India, hoping to re-create in Bangalore an elegant lost corner of England. Several retirees are enticed by the promise of indulgent living at a bargain price, but upon arriving, they are dismayed to find that restoration of the once sophisiticated hotel has stalled....
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Screenwriters Changed it for the Better
- By Carole T. on 06-05-12
By: Deborah Moggach
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Staying On
- By: Paul Scott
- Narrated by: Paul Shelley
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Tusker and Lily Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return ‘home’ when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pankot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their imposing landlady threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days.
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A Pleasant Meander
- By Ian C Robertson on 09-22-14
By: Paul Scott
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
- By: Bianca Marais
- Narrated by: Katharine Lee McEwan, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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A Spear of Summer Grass
- By: Deanna Raybourn
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
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The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even among Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savanna manor house until gossip subsides. Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. As mistress of this wasted estate, Delilah falls into the decadent pleasures of society.
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Disappointed
- By Vinity on 07-13-13
By: Deanna Raybourn
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Herzog
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
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Winner of the National Book Award when it was first published in 1964, Herzog traces five days in the life of a failed academic whose wife has recently left him for his best friend. Through the device of letter writing, Herzog movingly portrays both the internal life of its eponymous hero and the complexity of modern consciousness.
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Grows Within You
- By Chris Reich on 08-06-11
By: Saul Bellow
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Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years.
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Major Brendan Archer travels to Ireland - to the Majestic Hotel and to the fiancée he acquired on a rash afternoon's leave three years ago. Despite her many letters, the lady herself proves elusive, and the Major's engagement is short-lived. But he is unable to detach himself from the alluring discomforts of the crumbling hotel. Ensconced in the dim and shabby splendour of the Palm Court, surrounded by gently decaying old ladies and proliferating cats, the Major passes the summer.
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Absolutely delightful read
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The Painted Bird
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A harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II, The Painted Bird is a dark masterpiece that examines the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love. It is the first, and the most famous, novel by one of the most important and original writers of this century.
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A guided tour of Hell.
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What listeners say about Disgrace
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- TF
- 09-29-23
Essential reading
Or listening…a work that transcends time and place, though it also helps the reader understand South Africa and that time. A work very much deserving of its acclaim.
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Overall
- Reader
- 07-22-09
Intense
I now want to read everything this author has written. Superb, but challenging
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3 people found this helpful
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- Will Cathcart
- 08-15-20
Nabokov Raised by Wolves
This is a masterpiece that shreds you up inside. If Donna Tartt, Ann Patchett, and Nabokov had threesome that produced a love child which they abandoned in South Africa and Cormac McCartney raised her in a garage full of wolves, classic works, and opera playing 24/7 on surround sound— that would this book.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- thawstone
- 01-04-10
Amazing Story
It's hard to believe this book is fiction. It would seem the author would have to have lived this life in order to write such a convincing portrait.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Benedict
- 02-20-11
Understanding South Africa
There are two great books that I know of about life in South Africa: This one and Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (also on Audible.com and a terrific listen).
This is a powerful book, at some points I wanted to quit it because it was quite an emotional experience. But I am happy, very happy I kept with it.
I would say this book had great emotional impact as I have mentioned, plus it gave me an education on the people of the groups of South Africa and their character. Not always the pretty sight. I wonder if South Africa will ever "work".
The author is a Nobel prize winner for Literature in 2003. I learned a lot about him otherwise in the Wikipedia article on him, and highly recommend it. I believe part of the excellence of this book is the portrayal of life as it is in such a way that it could not be communicated in any other medium. Quite an achievement.
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1 person found this helpful
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Performance
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- GJ
- 05-25-20
Hmm, it’s hard to rate this. Bleak but essential.
Some themes: Desire, Loss, Justice, Transitions, Death
I would recommend this book to those who are okay with very bleak/sad endings. This book might also be for you if you are okay with flawed and unlikable characters.
Something I can say that is easy about the book is that it is easy to read...it’s a page-turner, as they say.
The voice actor does a good job throughout the audiobook. Two thumbs up there.
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- Michael E Harn
- 09-30-22
Shockingly Readable
A dark, dark book full of depressing characters and topics with some triggering events, yet I couldn't stop listening and didn't regret my time in this book. Recommended.
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- JOHN
- 07-18-10
Great book - aptly named
"Disgrace" - That pretty much says it all, and such is the fate of the main character, professor David Lurie.
I read this book years ago, before it was available on Audible. Brought to life by the reader Michael Cumpsty this audio version is just as satisfying, if not more than the written version.
It is virtually impossible to empathize with David Lurie, who's narcissistic and selfish behavior make him his own worst enemy. Yet J.M. Coetzee offers no excuses for Lurie. He is simply a very flawed man, aging against his will, resigned to act according to life's forces that direct him to his own demise.
On it's face, the story is simple. However there are many complexities that weave throughout: Lurie's relationship with his daughter Lucy, his avocational project on Byron, his checkered past with females, his interaction with Lucy's neighbors, his reluctant volunteering at an animal clinic.
The story and writing are as stark as the arid South African landscape where it is situated. This concise book is brutally straightforward and masterfully crafted.
Highly recommended.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Ian
- 03-01-11
A Great Work of Literature
Clear and easy to follow, but ultimately profoundly ambiguous and thought provoking. The novel is beautiful despite being hopeless and dispairing in the end. It is anti-romantic and reminded me of Unbearable Lightness of Being turned on its head. Incredibly vivid despite sparse, understated language. The ending scene was literally stunning and I wasn't able to process it fully emotionally until the following day. One of the top ten novels I've read (listened) to.
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- Jeff Lacy
- 03-16-21
A haunting story, well performed
Michael Cumpsty’s performance lends the edge to this haunting novel. He adds layers to the story contributing to a greater appreciation of the story (this is one of those novels to which reading and listening is valuable). With a well constructed plot, well developed characters, tight writing, the story propels forward compellingly. One draws its meaning as in a poem, profoundly. In the end, one feels viscerally the daunting significance in the silence, the emptiness
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