David Lurie, a South African college professor in his fifties and an unrepentant womanizer, is set in his ways: “His temperament is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body.” An affair with a student goes awry, however, and soon he leaves the city for his daughter’s rural smallholding.

Daughter Lucy is something of an enigma to him. Her sexuality, vocation, and social arrangements all puzzle him. He wants the best for her and actually begins to find a working place in rural society, but his difficulty understanding her choices raises tension between them.

An act of sexual and racial violence brings things to a head. The police are called, mostly for the sake of insurance policies, but otherwise things are allowed to settle. He, outraged, cannot fathom the crime’s mute acceptance by Lucy and her neighbors. He confronts one of the perpetrators on two occasions, but receives no support from anyone. The question plays out: how will a fixed temperament interact with a society fixed in quite a different way?

Coetzee’s writing is incredibly spare and clear, almost poetic in its ability to tell much by saying little. It’s written in the present tense, giving the impression of things happening now. It’s a dark story, but it’s not so bleak that it’s impossible to imagine real people living through it.

His portrait of race relations in South Africa suggests that the rise of native populations in rural areas will soon impact the old-ways cities. “Inexorably, he thinks, the country is coming to the city. Soon there will be cattle again on Rondebosch Common; soon history will have come full circle.”

The question of David allowing Lucy to live her life on her terms is the larger question of South African society: can those of European ancestry live with and accept the society built by their African compatriots?