Rating: 
Summary: A Dig Into Reality
Review: Waiting For the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee is a fine book, that depicts civilization at it's worst. I found the book to be boring frequently, but other parts, especially towards the end, were very thought provoking and good to read.
The book starts out with a thrilling opening, but then moves on into a dreary description of the magistrate's routine life. The beginning illustrates the empire's brutality and very appalling ways of punishment. The magistrate realizes this cruelty and this is why Coetzee then progresses onto the Magistrate's "digging" into the past and truth. When the empire is sick of the magistrate's reality check, his realization that the empire is not telling the truth perhaps, when he proceeds to take the enemy back to it's fort, that is when the book gets interesting again. The tone and image that the book creates is rather depressing, but very fascinating and truly makes a person question his or her morals. Should a person go against a mistaken society and corrupt government if that person thinks that everyone else is wrong?
The novel gives the reader a harsh and depressing picture of a corrupt Empire run by a tyrant. The book raises the question of whether or not an empire's lie to conceal the truth that could possibly ruin a civilization is permissible. In this book the Magistrate realizes that maybe the empire is not everything it is talked up to be, and that perhaps the empire's inhumane punishments are wrong and possibly over used.
This book, even though it is well written and very stimulating, is not a book for everyone, especially kids. A person who has a lot of time to think and analyze as he reads, is the person to read this 156 page book. This book is also a great book to use in an English class full of mature kids who are willing to think and discover. Another great book to read is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: I just reread "Waiting for the Barbarians" and found it less like Kafka than I did the first time and more like Coetzee's "Disgrace", which overall I rate higher. Numerous themes are explored in this well-laid-out novel. The protagonist, the magistrate of an outpost of Empire, wants to lead a life of sameness, in which historical conflicts and violence are avoided. His desires are sympathetic and his actions are sometimes laudable. Intruding into the sleepy life he and his outpost lead, police and army officers come, bringing with them violence, torture, but also possible a more realistic view of what is happening in the outside world. I won't be spoiling the novel by saying that the tension between these two views is not resolved at the end. A fine, fine book. I highly recommend it. Coetzee is both a very skilled novelist and also very interested in ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for Whom?
Review: I found this to be a very enjoyable book. It is well written, easy to follow, and full of insights and observations about...about what? That's what got me as I was reading "Waiting for the Barbarians". Don't get me wrong, this book is enjoyable in and of itself. However, as I read more and more into the book, I tried to get more and more out of the book. I may have been trying too hard. The political subject matter made you want to understand the author's allegory to some recent point in history. Since Coetzee is South African then the obvious allegory is the turmoil in South Africa at the time this book was written (1980). I could see this allegory somewhat; a different culture has taken over the land of a backward people, the ends of their empire feel the strain of a control that is slipping, the more the control slips, the more brutal their reaction to the "Barbarians". A man of some standing protests this treatment as he becomes more and more inquisitive of the humanity of the "enemy". His efforts at peace-making lead to his own punishment for siding with the eneny. Things start to fall apart at that point as the control starts to evaporate... Ok, I don't want to retell the whole story here; Coetzee does an excellent job of that. I guess at the end, there is an expectation of things to come that are born out of fear that leaves us hanging in limbo. That worked alright for me because I enjoyed the book from beginning to end. I understood this to be a glimpse of what it was like to be at the frontier at the time of a sweeping change of power. Perhaps that IS an allegory of South Africa circa 1980.
Rating: 
Summary: An important book
Review: This book's reputation preceded it; I was not disappointed. There are some who believe Coetzee is our finest living writer. I am among them. Waiting for the Barbarians is a rare book. Seldomly has so few words achieved such clarity. It is on level with the classics the "Heart of Darkness" and "1984".
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I just reread "Waiting for the Barbarians" and found it less like Kafka than I did the first time and more like Coetzee's "Disgrace", which overall I rate higher. Numerous themes are explored in this well-laid-out novel. The protagonist, the magistrate of an outpost of Empire, wants to lead a life of sameness, in which historical conflicts and violence are avoided. His desires are sympathetic and his actions are sometimes laudable. Intruding into the sleepy life he and his outpost lead, police and army officers come, bringing with them violence, torture, but also possible a more realistic view of what is happening in the outside world. I won't be spoiling the novel by saying that the tension between these two views is not resolved at the end. A fine, fine book. I highly recommend it. Coetzee is both a very skilled novelist and also very interested in ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for Whom?
Review: I found this to be a very enjoyable book. It is well written, easy to follow, and full of insights and observations about...about what? That's what got me as I was reading "Waiting for the Barbarians". Don't get me wrong, this book is enjoyable in and of itself. However, as I read more and more into the book, I tried to get more and more out of the book. I may have been trying too hard. The political subject matter made you want to understand the author's allegory to some recent point in history. Since Coetzee is South African then the obvious allegory is the turmoil in South Africa at the time this book was written (1980). I could see this allegory somewhat; a different culture has taken over the land of a backward people, the ends of their empire feel the strain of a control that is slipping, the more the control slips, the more brutal their reaction to the "Barbarians". A man of some standing protests this treatment as he becomes more and more inquisitive of the humanity of the "enemy". His efforts at peace-making lead to his own punishment for siding with the eneny. Things start to fall apart at that point as the control starts to evaporate... Ok, I don't want to retell the whole story here; Coetzee does an excellent job of that. I guess at the end, there is an expectation of things to come that are born out of fear that leaves us hanging in limbo. That worked alright for me because I enjoyed the book from beginning to end. I understood this to be a glimpse of what it was like to be at the frontier at the time of a sweeping change of power. Perhaps that IS an allegory of South Africa circa 1980.
Rating: 
Summary: Well meaning but derivative.
Review: References are to Cavafy (for the title) and Dino Buzzati (The Tartar Steppe) for the concept. Good enough in its way, but the Nobel prize is not justified. Poor Kafka has a lot to answer for.
Rating:
Summary: Brutality and the brutalized
Review: The setting of J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians" would seem like a political dystopia if it weren't so similar, if not identical, to many real situations in world history up to today. The premise is that a relatively new civilization of settlers have colonized a land formerly inhabited by natives, whom they call barbarians, and have established garrisons and strongholds to protect themselves from imagined attacks by the barbarians. The settlers constitute a political entity which is referred to as the Empire, the implication being that they want and need to expand their borders continually to allow their civilization to thrive, pushing the barbarians further back into the hinterlands. It certainly sounds realistic, but the novel has the edge of science fiction. It seems to be set in a fantasy world, since there is no indication of time or place with respect to real history and geography, except that the era seems no more modern than Victorian. Contributing to the novel's grimly impersonal tone is the fact that most of the characters are unnamed except for Joll and Mandel, two military officers who exemplify the Empire's hawkish stance. By contrast, the first-person narrator, a magistrate and reluctantly loyal servant of the Empire, possesses the novel's humanist conscience in that he secretly sympathizes with the barbarians, condemning the unnecessary brutality of the soldiers who raid the lands and seize barbarian prisoners. Like the archetypal rebels in the dystopian novels "Brave New World," "Darkness at Noon," and "1984," the narrator is a symbol of nonconformist thought and action in the face of an oppressive political regime. Consequently, he is accused by his superiors of consorting with the enemy -- he had been sheltering (and seducing) a barbarian girl who had been captured and beaten by the Imperial soldiers -- and is punished. But the conflicts he experiences are internal as much as external; he is a firm pacifist but cannot imagine any other way to live than under the comfort and protection of the bellicose Empire. Whether or not the novel is supposed to be allegorical, it doesn't have the tone of a political diatribe. It is as compassionate and as insightful as its narrator, understanding people's need for security, land, and freedom, carefully measuring different perspectives on imperial war. (Explaining his dovish opinion to a soldier, the narrator is conscious of his apparent weakness as a potential defender of the Empire.) Perhaps the novel merely intends to present an extreme scenario in which a mentality of tribalism has completely usurped humanity: Will a complex system of walls and gates continue to divide society, in the name of empire or other agenda, until we are huddling behind parapets, waiting for "barbarians" who may never come, who may not even exist outside of our imaginations?
Rating:
Summary: Essential conflict
Review: Unlike 'Dusklands' where the two different stories didn't transcend the treated themes, this book is a magisterial evocation of an essential human problem: the conflict between personal conscience on the level of the human race in its totality ('the figure every father could be') and the conscience as a member of a clan (a specific unit of the human race).
In other words, it is the battle between the only Just (the Magistrate) and patriotic bloodthirstiness (colonel Joll).
The last one kills the fathers of other clans, while the first one cannot accept 'barbarism' against all kind of humans.
This theme is symbolized by the love of the Magistrate for the 'barbarian' tortured girl, while he finds within his clan only prostitution.
This book is also a variant on the conflict between the civil and the military authorities. The main characters of this novel are in fact the same as in 'Dusklands', with colonel Joll as Jacobus Coetzee and the Magistrate as Euguene Dawn. Everybody should read this brilliantly written, cool, detached, but implacable prose in order to know the outcome of the conflict.
This novel is a real masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: How depressing can it get?
Review: I appreciate this is an Pulitzer Prize winning author. However, when you're ready to read this book make sure you've had a great day. You'll need that and perhaps a stiff drink! Coetzee repeatedly describes every thought that comes into the main character's head and every movement of his body until I wanted to scream "I get it!". And often "I don't care". I do acknowledge the importance of his multilayered messages: colonialism, man's inhumanity to man, the superior attitude of western society, etc. But by the end I kept hoping for some glimmer of hope - that I could actually make it through the end and be put out of my misery.
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