Waiting for the Barbarians - J. M. Coetzee

Moving and powerful, this book presents the dark tale of an aging magistrate in an African frontier settlement, who finds himself becoming increasingly sympathetic toward the indigenous barbarians that the colonial empire's forces brutalize. nA modern classic by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee.

His latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking.

• Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018

nFor decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.n nJ.

M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between opressor and opressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.n nMark Rylance (Wolf Hall, Bridge of Spies), Ciro Guerra and producer Michael Fitzgerald are teaming up to to bring J.M.

Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians to the big screen.n