Waiting for the Barbarians

Having been so impressed by Disgrace a few weeks ago, I eagerly snapped up a copy of J M Coetzee's Waiting For The Barbarians when I saw it in a Cheam charity shop.

Set in a remote outpost of an unnamed Empire, this powerful novella could be describing events in any Empires throughout hundreds of years of human history or, as I mentioned in yesterday's Gulag 101 review, it could even be an allegorical representation of the whipped up paranoia in Britain right now. The themes of us against them, social exclusion and assumed racial superiority are frighteningly relevant despite Waiting For The Barbarians having been written nearly four decades ago.

Our narrator is the Magistrate, an anonymous older man who has spent his life on his Empire's fringes maintaining and administering the official idea of order, but mostly without infringing too deeply on the lives of the indigenous peoples, the 'barbarians', outside his town. I am reminded of Anais Mitchell's prophetic Hadestown song with The Wall here protecting Empire within itself while resolutely keeping all others Out. Trouble arrives with Colonel Joll, a new breed of Empire official who seeks evidence of a barbarian plot to overthrow the Empire. Capturing and viciously torturing local fisherfolk and nomads until they 'reveal' whatever he wants to hear, Joll leaves in his wake not a safer Empire, but angry people who may not have been enemies before, but certainly are now. The Magistrate is revolted by Joll's actions and, on finding himself left to clear up the aftermath, he slowly begins to question what he has seen and previously believed.

The gathering pace of this town's rush towards disaster has a poignantly painful inevitability about it. The townspeople, convinced of their invincibility and communally baying for revenge against imagined aggressions, are led into ever increasing paranoia by men who certainly don't have the town's best interests at heart. Any crime is now attributed to the barbarians and fear of 'what could happen if ...' is manipulated until civilians 'see' malevolent barbarians in every shadow. Unconnected peoples are swept into the category of barbarians simply for being different, losing their homes and livelihoods in the process.

Coetzee does briefly but vividly describe some tortures - there is one scene in particular which squeamish me wishes I could unread - but it is the ease and speed of the psychological manipulation which I found truly shocking. His understanding of human nature is effectively portrayed and his characters are utterly and depressingly believable. I could clearly envisage the walled town surrounded by crop fields, the wide desert with its mountain horizon, the Magistrate's cluttered office and his bare claustrophobic prison cell. I certainly think that Waiting For The Barbarians will be one of my Top Ten Reads come the end of 2016 and I wouldn't be surprised if it has not been surpassed.

This story is a striking indictment of colonialism and imperialism in all its forms. What struck me the most was how the protagonist developed from merely having some feelings of guilt about the racist treatment meted out to prisoners, to becoming self-aware of his privilege and his role in the advancement of Empire, to experiencing self-hate and indifference. His continuous naivete and idealistic bursts of optimism keep pushing him towards yet more atrocities as he comes to terms with the evil that he stands for. He grapples with his own perception of what can be defined as "civilisation" and what can be its opposite, "barbarianism", and finds the gaps in his understanding very troubling. The writing is delicate yet every sentence is pregnant with myriad conflicting emotions. The ever-present threat of war against an enemy created from nothing, the inner conflict between a life's worth of imperialist indoctrination and a newfound sense of post-colonial truth, the uncertain relations with other people, a rejection of history (especially imperialist history) and a return to nature, all are present consistently in the text, and impress themselves upon the reader continuously. Coetzee strives to explore all aspects of colonialism and how it makes prisoners of both oppressor and oppressed, with an almost austere, detached yet deeply poignant perspective that left a mark so deeply that it has compelled me to research more into settler-colonialism and other forms of imperialism that linger to this day.

There is much that can be said about the novel "Waiting for the Barbarians" by J.M. Cotzee. The author has constructed a first-rate allegory that explores the personal costs of a man caught in the middle of the forces of empire. Not always pleasant but infinitely thought provoking, "Waiting for the Barbarians" is perhaps the best fictional mediation on the cost of control, the psychology of colonialism and the perpetuation of empire, painted with an interesting, engaging narrative. The central protagonist is the Magistrate, an older minor public official serving on a frontier outpost of the Empire. He spends his days in idleness in a place that has been relatively peaceful. But things change with the arrival of Colonel Joll, a member of the secret police from the Capital, who brings with him sinister methods of interrogation and a preemptive war against the "barbarians" in the North. The Magistrate becomes involved with a barbarian women tortured by Joll. Through his interactions with the mechanizations of the State, he begins to quixotically resist the very foundations of the Empire. In his rebellion we get to see how the Empire functions and what it means to be a part of such a system in a barren land. The book is perhaps should be seen first and foremost as a product of the Apartheid regime of South Africa in the late 70's and early 80's (the author was a staunch opponent of the system). But the book is so much more than that. It is an examination of events and ideas that can be shown in many situations in history and is more of a universal human condition. The history of empire is unlike the passage of time what most people experience. It is not within the natural cycles but part of a rise and fall and its energies are put towards its preservation above all else. The book is well-written with complex characters and ideas. Not for everyone but it's a book you'll think about long after you its read.