Reviews

"See, there is only a single character, it is the barbarian character 'war' but it has other senses too. It can stand for 'vengence' and if you turn it upside down like this, it can be made to read 'Justice' There is no knowing which sense is intended. That is a part of barbarian cunning.

The narrator is Magistrate on a border area; fifty years of age. He is probably from somewhere in middle of empire but has been employed here for almost thirty years,living a very easy life. He has been so far cut from the Empire during all this time that he couldn't figure out the use of 'little black disks' that Colonel Joll was wearing on his eyes.

As for nomads repeatedly called Barbarians, his sympathies made him see them as humans - specially after he grows close to a crippled girl.

Unlike Magistrate, Colonial and later all the other officers from bureau, are prejudiced against Barbarians. From very begining we see them capturing people too incapable of war (the first two captured were an old man and an ill boy) and torturing them until they get the truth or what army want to believe was truth - "Pain is truth, all else is subject to doubt.

And what do army want to believe is truth? You train people how to fight for years, give them guns - and they will go around looking for a reason to fight everywhere. Having guns don't make you courageous, it makes you paranoid. And thus they make themselves believe that barbarians are about to attack the empire. Empire sends its forces to the town creating a war like atmosphere.

Magistrate repeatedly try to correct their follies,trying to correct the contempt they hold for nomads but:

"How do you eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantional than differences in table manners, variations in the stucture of the eyelid?

Is all civiliasation a difference in table manners? If after thousands of years of being togather we still find reasons to fight, are we really civilised? Do we really need that 'black flower of civilisation?

And just look at the ways people are being tortured (third time I read a Coetzee, third time I needed a anti-depression pill):

"A simple loop of wire runs through the flesh of every man's hands and through holes pierced in his cheeks. "It makes them meek as lamb," I remember being told by a soldier who had once seen the trick: "they think of nothing but how to keep very still."

These kind of tortures are coming from a 'civilised' army. The second half of the book is mostly filled with ways army tortured their captives and narrator. Barbarians (like Godot) never come. Till the end soldiers are the only people who are seen commiting any barbarian acts.

bookzfanatic007's review against another edition

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3.0

"A well wrote exploration into power, oppression and the human psyche"

sav2648's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

gadicohen93's review against another edition

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4.0

Haunting، beautiful, anguished, morally resonant writing. There was something strange, exceptional, layered with ambiguity and meaning in the protagonist's affair with the mutilated barbarian woman. The story in its entirety feels rife for dissection. "Waiting for the Barbarians" as a title reflects the tone and atmosphere that's imbued throughout: Not just the overarching trepidation for the expected onslaught of the natives, but the unresolved, tangled tensions that lie at the heart of the book and of the protagonist. It took me a long time to read, two weeks — it's almost a surprise to find out how short the book is. It grabbed me in many spots but also sometimes felt abstract, larger-than-life, tiringly allegorical. Some scenes are etched in my memory, while others I had a hard time comprehending on the page — maybe more my issue than the book's. I'm stunned by the clarity and flow of the author's words, though there is a traditional rigidity to the writing. Overall, I was impressed and inspired by this book.

athena1820's review

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challenging dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

spectracommunist's review against another edition

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5.0

1980, Penguin 20: Great Books of the 20th Century - 5/20

The narration was just utterly sublime! Coetzee undoubtedly deserved the Nobel prize for this work.

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