Utanc - J. M. Coetzee Here

In Summertime , his fictionalized memoir, a character says of Coetzee himself: “He was not a happy man. He was a man beset by shame.” Perhaps that is his gift to us: a literature that refuses to look away from the small, ugly, utterly human moment when we realize we are not who we wished to be.

His punishment for this moral stand is not imprisonment or death. It is Utanc . Utanc - J. M. Coetzee

There, a horrific attack occurs: Lurie is set on fire, and Lucy is gang-raped by three men. What follows is a masterpiece of utanc psychology. Lucie refuses to report the crime. She refuses to name her attackers. And when Lurie presses her, she gives an answer that has haunted readers for decades: “There is no shame in what happened to me. That is the wrong word. Utanc. I feel utanc.” In Summertime , his fictionalized memoir, a character