"Lively, succinct, and readable, Andrew van der Vlies's handbook of key themes, contexts, and intertexts is the best reader's guide to J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace on the market. Attentive to the politics of literary form and to the controversies of the novel's reception, Van der Vlies's companion will stimulate discussions in the classroom and beyond for some time to come." - Mark Sanders (New York University), author of Ambiguities of Witnessing: Law and Literature in the Time of a Truth Commission

"When it was first published in 1999 Disgrace opened up a uniquely challenging space in our times, the meaning of which we are still trying to grasp. Andrew van der Vlies's wonderful book is an essential guide for all new and not-so-new readers eager to find their own way through this vitally important, absorbingly labyrinthine fiction and the unfolding story of its effects." - Peter D. McDonald, (Oxford University), author of The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences (2009)

'His detailed account of central themes, alongside a narrative of Disgrace's historical context and reception, will bolster the thinking of any casual reader.'

Times Literary Supplement