162. South Africa

Disgrace by JM Coetzee

Set in the post-apartheid South Africa, this is an un-sugar-coated and fairly bleak snapshot into the life of a middle-aged, middle-class white man. 

David Lurie is a twice-divorced university professor who, after lightly stalking the prostitute he favours and therefore losing her custom, begins sexual relations with one of his students who, though of legal age, is still a teenager. This shallow relationship soon falls apart and it is revealed that though Lurie's principles may be morally dubious, he is a still man of integrity and does not waver from them - even when it harms his career and reputation. However, this is not to say that he is an admirable character - not at all. David Lurie is, in fact, a bit of a shit. A misogynistic, sex-addicted snob who believes that he is too old to change and should have the right not to.

This is a story about his hard fall into disgrace and is a pretty accurate reflection of post-apartheid South Africa in that time (I haven't been there for the last thirteen years so can't say more than that).

Disgrace won the Man Booker Prize (1999) and four years later JM Coetzee won the Pullitzer Prize for Literature.