Waiting for the Barbarians
Encyclopedia
Waiting for the Barbarians is a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by the South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

n-born author J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 in 2003. The novel was published in 1980. It was chosen by Penguin for its series Great Books of the 20th Century
Great Books of the 20th Century
Great Books of the 20th Century is a series of twenty novels published by Penguin Books.Included in this series:*Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad *Swann's Way by Marcel Proust...

and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book prizes awarded for literature written in the English language and are Britain's oldest literary awards...

 and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is a British literary prize established in 1963 in tribute to Geoffrey Faber, founder and first Chairman publisher Faber & Faber...

 for fiction. American composer Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

 has also written an opera of the same name
Waiting for the Barbarians (opera)
Waiting for the Barbarians is an opera in two acts composed by Philip Glass, with libretto by Christopher Hampton based on the 1980 novel of the same name by South African-born author John M. Coetzee...

 based on the book which premiered in September 2005 in Erfurt
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.

Coetzee took the title from the poem "Waiting for the Barbarians" by Greek-Egyptian poet Constantine P. Cavafy
Constantine P. Cavafy
Constantine P. Cavafy, also known as Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or Kavaphes was a renowned Greek poet who lived in Alexandria and worked as a journalist and civil servant...

. It may also be an allusion to Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

's Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...

. Inspiration from Dino Buzzati
Dino Buzzati
Dino Buzzati-Traverso was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel Il deserto dei Tartari, translated into English as The Tartar Steppe.-Life:Buzzati was born at San Pellegrino,...

's novel The Tartar Steppe
The Tartar Steppe
The Tartar Steppe is a novel by Italian author Dino Buzzati, published in 1940.The novel tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo, and his life spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. The plot of the novel is Drogo's lifelong wait for a great war in...

is also evident, both for the title and the plot.

Plot

The story is set in a small frontier town under the jurisdiction of a political entity known only as "the Empire". The town's magistrate is the story's protagonist and first-person narrator. His rather peaceful existence in the town comes to an end with the declaration of a state of emergency
State of emergency
A state of emergency is a governmental declaration that may suspend some normal functions of the executive, legislative and judicial powers, alert citizens to change their normal behaviours, or order government agencies to implement emergency preparedness plans. It can also be used as a rationale...

 and arrival of the Third Bureau, special forces of the Empire, led by a sinister Colonel Joll. There are rumours that the natives of the land, called "barbarian
Barbarian
Barbarian and savage are terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage...

s", are preparing an attack on the Empire, and so Colonel Joll and his men conduct an expedition into the land beyond the frontier. They capture a number of barbarians, bring them back to town, torture them, kill some of them, and leave for the capital in order to prepare a larger campaign against the barbarians.

In the meantime, the Magistrate begins to question the legitimacy of imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

 and personally nurses a barbarian girl who was left crippled and partly blinded by the Third Bureau's torturers. Eventually, the two begin a sexual relationship before he decides to take her back to her people. After a life-threatening trip through the barren land, he succeeds in returning her—finally asking, to no avail, if she will stay with him—and returns to his own town. The Third Bureau soldiers have reappeared there and now arrest the Magistrate for having deserted his post and consorting with "the enemy". Without much possibility of a trial in wartime, the Magistrate remains in a locked cellar for an indefinite period, experiencing for the first time a near-complete lack of basic freedoms. He finally acquires a key that allows him to leave the makeshift jail, but finds that he has no place to escape to and only spends his time outside the jail scavenging for extra scraps of food.

Later, Colonel Joll triumphantly returns from the wilderness with several barbarian captives and makes a public spectacle of their torture. Although the crowd is encouraged to participate in their beatings, the Magistrate bursts onto the scene to stop it, but is subdued. Taking the Magistrate, a group of soldiers hangs him up by his arms
Strappado
Strappado is a form of torture in which the victim's hands are first tied behind their back and suspended in the air by means of a rope attached to wrists, which most likely dislocates both arms...

, culminating his understanding of imperialistic violence in a personal experience of torture. With the Magistrate's spirit clearly crushed, the soldiers mockingly let him roam freely through the town, knowing he has nowhere to go and no longer poses a threat to their mission. The soldiers, however, begin to abandon the town as winter approaches and their campaign against the barbarians starts to fall apart. The Magistrate tries to confront Joll on his final return from the wild, but the colonel refuses to speak to him, hastily fleeing the area with the last of the soldiers. With a widespread belief that the barbarians intend to invade the town soon, all the soldiers and many civilians have now departed, though the Magistrate helps encourage the remaining townspeople to continue their lives and to prepare for the winter. There is no sign of the barbarians by the time the season's first snow falls on the town.

Awards and nominations

After Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 in 2003, Waiting for the Barbarians was chosen by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

 for its series "Great Books of the 20th Century
Great Books of the 20th Century
Great Books of the 20th Century is a series of twenty novels published by Penguin Books.Included in this series:*Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad *Swann's Way by Marcel Proust...

". The Nobel Prize committee called Waiting for the Barbarians "a political thriller in the tradition of Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

, in which the idealist’s naiveté opens the gates to horror".

Adaptations

The opera by Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...

 is based on Coetzee's book and Christopher Hampton's libretto adapts the story faithfully. The opera premiered on September 10, 2005, at the Theater of Erfurt
Erfurt
Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, under the direction of Guy Montavon. The lead role of the Magistrate was sung by British baritone Richard Salter, Colonel Joll by American baritone Eugene Perry, who has starred in a number of Glass operas, and the barbarian girl by Elvira Soukop. The musical director of the premiere was Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies
Dennis Russell Davies is an American conductor and pianist. He studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School where he received his doctorate...

. As Glass told journalists and the Erfurt audience at a matinée, he sees scary parallels between the opera's story and the Iraq War: a military campaign, scenes of torture, talk about threats to the Empire's peace and safety, but no proof. The Austin Lyric Opera
Austin Lyric Opera
Austin Lyric Opera, founded in 1986, is an internationally known opera company based in Austin, Texas.It also operates the Armstrong Community Music School....

 performed the American premiere of Waiting for the Barbarians on January 19, 2007, conducted by Richard Buckley and under the direction of Guy Montavon, who was joined again by Richard Salter and Eugene Perry as the Magistrate and Colonel Joll, respectively, and mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala as the Barbarian Girl.

External links

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