Disgrace by JM Coetzee. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a year or so, and the Nobel Prize (along with the interesting, if not strictly relevant, fact that Coetzee is now living in Adelaide) finally prompted me to read it. It’s a bleak look at post-apartheid South Africa and at the human condition in general. The hero is a middle-aged academic, formerly a classicist and now reduced to teaching communications who leaves his job in disgrace after an affair with a student, and goes to live with his daughter on a remote farmlet. Coetzee got into a lot of trouble in South Africa over the central scene, in which the pair are attacked by a group of black marauders, and for the generally pessimistic outlook of the book as a whole. His latest book, Elizabeth Costello has an Australian writer as its main character, and covers some of the same themes as Disgrace, including animal rights and how to talk about evil. I was impressed by the excerpt I read in Prospect but haven’t yet seen the book.

Last night, I went to a concert by Margret RoadKnight, looking back on forty years on the folk scene. She showed off both her vast range of traditional and contemporary music and a voice that hasn’t lost any of its quality in the thirty years I’ve been listening to her. Accompaniment was provided by Bruce McNicol, late of the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band. The concert was held at the very snazzy Judith Wright Cultural Centre and the audience was much more cultural centre than folk club. With the exception of the goateed youngsters taking the tickets mine was just about the only beard there.