Books

First edition of the Nobel Prize-winning author's first book. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly signed by J.M. Coetzee on the title page. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Dusklands is a pair of novellas in the tradition of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The first novella "Dusklands" probes the links between the powerful and the powerless. The second novella "Vietnam Project" is narrated by a researcher investigating the effectiveness of United States propaganda and psychological warfare in Vietnam. The question of power is also explored in "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee," the story of an eighteenth-century Boer frontiersman who vows revenge on the Hottentot natives because they have failed to treat him with the respect that he thinks a white man deserves.

Dusklands, published in 1974, is the debut novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. It consists of two separate narratives, 'The Vietnam Project' and 'The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee.' The book explores various aspects of colonization, conflict, and power dynamics.