COETZEE, J. M.
The author's first work of fiction, Dusklands criticizes the inherent violence of the Western world's colonial and imperial past. Really two novellas, The Vietnam Project, and The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, the book tells the story of a 20th-century specialist in psychological warfare and an 18th-century Boer frontiersman. The last line of the first part, "I have high hopes of finding out whose fault I am," ranks as one of the most disturbing sentences in 20th-century fiction.
