Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [0]
Title
By the Same Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Author's Note
Notebooks 1972–75
Julia
Margot
Adriana
Martin
Sophie
Notebooks: undated fragments
SUMMERTIME
Scenes from Provincial Life
ALSO BY
J.M. Coetzee
Dusklands
In the Heart of the Country
Waiting for the Barbarians
Life & Times of Michael K
Foe
White Writing
Age of Iron
Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews
The Master of Petersburg
Giving Offense
Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life
The Lives of Animals
Disgrace
Stranger Shores: Essays 1986–1999
Youth
Elizabeth Costello
Slow Man
Inner Workings
Diary of a Bad Year
J.M. Coetzee
Summertime
Scenes from Provincial Life
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ISBN 9781409088622
Version 1.0
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Published by Harvill Secker 2009
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Copyright © J.M. Coetzee 2009
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ISBN: 9781409088622
Version 1.0
Grateful thanks to Faber and Faber Ltd and the estate of Samuel Beckett for permission to quote from Waiting for Godot
Author's note
My thanks to Marilia Bandeira for assistance with Brazilian Portuguese, and to the estate of Samuel Beckett for permission to quote (in fact to misquote) from Waiting for Godot.
Notebooks 1972–75
22 August 1972
IN YESTERDAY'S Sunday Times, a report from Francistown in Botswana. Sometime last week, in the middle of the night, a car, a white American model, drove up to a house in a residential area. Men wearing balaclavas jumped out, kicked down the front door, and began shooting. When they had done with shooting they set fire to the house and drove off. From the embers the neighbours dragged seven charred bodies: two men, three women, two children.
The killers appeared to be black, but one of the neighbours heard them speaking Afrikaans among themselves and was convinced they were whites in blackface. The dead were South Africans, refugees who had moved into the house mere weeks ago.
Approached for comment, the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, through a spokesman, calls the report 'unverified'.
Inquiries will be undertaken, he says, to determine whether the deceased were indeed South African citizens. As for the military, an unnamed source denies that the SA Defence Force had anything to do with the matter. The killings are probably an internal ANC matter, he suggests, reflecting 'ongoing tensions' between factions.
So they come out, week after week, these tales from the borderlands, murders followed by bland denials. He reads the reports and feels soiled. So this is what he has come back to! Yet where in the world can one hide where one will not feel