Ms. Hen reviews Waiting for the Barbarians

Waiting for the Barbarians

J. M. Coetzee

Penguin Books 

1980

Ms. Hen decided to read this book, because she had read it when she was an undergrad hen, and the last book she read reminded her of this. She had to read it twice when she was in college, and she did not remember loving the book, and even though it's brief, it's heavy. When she read it this time, she discovered she didn't remember it well.

This novel is about a Magistrate who lives in a village that is an outpost of a kingdom. He lives a comfortable life, until a barbarian girl comes into his acquaintance, and he invites her to his room. She has been beaten, and is mostly blind; her father was killed in front of her, and she has suffered. The Magistrate takes pity on her, and washes her feet, and pampers her in his room, but at first does not take her for his lover. There is much gossip about her staying in his room, but he ignores it, which ends up being to his detriment.

He decides the girl should be back with her people, so he travels with her and a group of men to take her home. They travel through the mountains in the springtime. The men who accompany them don't understand the purpose of their journey at first, but they find out. When they return to the village after returning the girl to her people, the Magistrate gets in trouble, and is sent to jail. He suffers because he wanted to do the right thing.

When Ms. Hen was in school, a lot of the students and the professor spent time trying to figure out where this novel takes place, because that is not stated in the text. They decided it could have been Asia, or Africa or North America, but Ms. Hen thought it was Afghanistan. She realizes after reading it again, that the setting is irrelevant, what is important is that it's a story about power, and men with power doing what they want to enjoy it, flaunt it, and keep it at all costs. Other men with power want to take power away from men with more power, and it is a vicious cycle.

This novel is also about love. It's about a man who loves a woman, and who would do anything to make her life better, and he pays the price for it. The Magistrate was a philanderer, but he loved the girl, and even though she most likely never knew, he sacrificed his career and his livelihood for his love.

Ms. Hen thinks this novel is a slow read, but it's worth it. The world can be dysfunctional, and it can seem to get worse as life goes on, but people have to learn how to do the right thing at any cost. This novel is like a brick in the throat, but that's the way life can be sometimes.