This novella is in two parts, one following a man who works with Mr. Coetzee in some way, though his exact relationship with Mr. Coetzee was a bit vague. This guy is clearly insane, and his insanity becomes more clear by the end of his narrative. Then the book shifts to an account of Mr. Coetzee, apparently the author's ancestor who took part in the ugly, brutal violence involved in opening new areas of South Africa's interior to colonial exploitation. The book does not shy away from this violence of that time and seems geared towards showing the reader the ugly underbelly of history that might not have been mentioned in school history books. I did like that at least for a while the local native people in this story, a tribe of Bushmen so far resistant to colonial dominance, hold the upper hand with Coetzee and his group. But, of course, Coetzee does his best to exterminate the tribe as soon as he is able in retribution for his bruised pride.
I did not particularly enjoy this book, but I appreciated the depiction of pre-colonial or early-colonial Africa. The first part was weird, and I didn't get as much out of it. ( )

This was Coetzee's first novel, started whilst he was teaching at Buffalo, New York in the early seventies and active in the anti-war movement. As you would probably expect, it's not your average first novel, and as well as being a critique of US and African colonialism it also has some traces of Coetzee's unusual academic background in both computer science and literature.

There are two apparently unrelated narratives: one by Eugene Dawn, a mythographer working on a Vietnam War project for a lightly-fictionalised version of RAND Corporation, and the other by 18th-century Afrikaner Jacobus Coetzee, describing a hunting expedition north of the Orange River in the 1760s. But both are very unstable texts. Dawn has been commissioned by his boss, the sinister game theorist Coetzee (!), to write a report on the most efficient way of demoralising the Vietnamese people but the effects of the concepts and material he has to deal with send him into a nervous breakdown and he goes off on a Nabokovian fugue to a motel in the middle of nowhere with his young son.

Jacobus tells us in a first-person narrative about the disastrous failure of his expedition — they get into conflict with the indigenous Namaqua people, everything possible goes wrong, and Jacobus loses all his dignity and the things that differentiate him from the indigenous people (gun, trousers, shoes, wagon, servants, authority). But this story is followed by two other accounts of the same expedition, one supposedly written in 1951 by yet another Coetzee, the fictional father of the fictional J.M. Coetzee who is compiling this book, and the other the official report Jacobus submitted to the Company after his expedition. Needless to say, neither of them bears any obvious relation to what we've just read, beyond the fact that they all tell us that Jacobus crossed the Orange River (before it was known by that name).

It's a very self-consciously literary novel, and very much of its time. Bellow and Nabokov loom large in the first part, Patrick White and Beckett in the second. But it's also a very direct challenge to preconceptions about "western civilisation": if the loss of his gun and his trousers were enough to put Jacobus on the same level as the Khoikhoi, what does that tell us about the photos of US soldiers posing with the severed heads of their Vietnamese victims that Dawn has to look at in the course of his work? ( )

J.M. Coetzee's "Dusklands" is actually two short novellas -- both fairly brutal portrayals of revenge. I struggled through the first, "The Vietnam Project" which was really dry and somewhat boring until the final act, while I found "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee" far more interesting.

This was Coetzee's debut novel -- I wouldn't say I particularly enjoyed these works, I can certainly see, if this is where he started, why he would go on to be awarded a Pulizter later on.

I've read this really isn't a great introduction to his works so I perhaps started reading him with the wrong book. ( )

Brutal and upsetting. Too short novels about the violence inherent in colonialism and the misreading of cultures. Did I enjoy it? No. But would I read another? Hell, yes.

It's hard to believe that this was Coetzee's first book - it is very accomplished and elegant despite the subject matter. You can see where he draws from - Nabokov, Kafka, Beckett, yet he makes it his own. ( )

Coetzee’s first novel Dusklands is a fairly short piece of work divided into two halves: an American military psychologist’s report on propaganda techniques being used in the then-ongoing Vietnam War, and a manuscript detailing a journey undertaken by fictional South African pioneer “Jacobus Coetzee” which descends into violence and blood-letting.

Like Coetzee’s future works, Dusklands is grim and depressing; an examination of dominion, colonialism and exploitation. Jacobus’ story is the more overtly oppressive of the two, and I actually think the book would have worked better if the narrative halves were switched; beginning with the violence of 18th century colonial South Africa, followed by the more subtle brutality of psychological warfare by foreign occupiers in Vietnam.

Coetzee’s writing, as always, is beautifully clear. His powerful, distinctive voice is evident even in this early novel. Dusklands contains some wonderful scenes – I particularly liked a description of Jacobus’ hunting party as described by the trail of litter, bullets and bodily fluids they left in their wake – and also some horrible, disturbing scenes. (Oddly enough, for all the violence in the book, nothing made me squirm more than a description of Jacobus attempting to pierce a pus-filled sore on his buttocks.) Dusklands is a strong first novel, and stands up well against the masterpieces that would follow it. ( )