Giving Up might be a more accurate title to this novel.

This is the first novel I've read where I didn't want to visit the place.

The novel starts with a supposed disgrace, which doesn't seem so bad. David Laurie, the main character has an affair with his student and covers up her absences and mid-term grade for her. So teachers have been doing that since the Gymnasium in classical Greece, but post-apartheid South African went all the way to left and this some terrible crime as if the last 200 years didn't exist.

So David goes to visit his downwardly mobile lesbian daughter who lives on a "smallholding" which was at one time an attempt at a hippie commune, but now ist just her on the farm. He bought it for her. She operates a dog kennel and sells goods at a farmer's market to get by. She is helped by an African man, Petrus, who is taking on more of ownership role instead of being the help.

Her situation is untenable, she is raped by three Africans who light David on fire. Meanwhile Petrus looks the other way just like the police do. Instead of moving she stays. This is disgrace on top of disgrace. Then she has the child of the rape. More disgrace. She marries Petrus who takes her land.

David finds salvation putting dogs down. He gives up one he particular likes. A metaphor for his life and whites South Africa. Coetzee moved Australia after this book and became a citizen there. I previously read Waiting for the Barbarians, in the main character waits for the downfall of the empire and Childhood of Jesus in which the character emigrate to a new country. So this fits in the middle - the moment when he gives up his homeland.