In the Heart of the Country

by J. M. Coetzee

First published 1977

Trapped on her family's remote farm, a bitter woman silently seethes against her callous father and the servants who scorn her. Desperate to escape her invisibility, she hatches a plan to assert her presence in the only way she can - through an act of shocking violence. A fierce, uncompromising portrait of isolation and the lengths one woman will go to be seen.

Genres: literary-fiction, 20th-century, african-literature, family-drama

Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, thought-provoking

Tropes: unreliable-narrator

Setting: South Africa

Period: 20th-century

160 pages · Paperback · Minerva

Content warnings: violence

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