[Dusklands] was a most authentic sounding diary of an early explorer, a device which allowed [Coetzee] to show the jelling of rigid attitudes and the props needed to establish and maintain the master/servant relationship, which is still the crutch of the South African establishment.

[From the Heart of the Country] continues this probe. Bold in concept, it purports to be the diary of a spinster on an isolated and unspecified desert sheep farm…. The reader soon realizes that these are the untrustworthy ravings of a hysterical, demented individual consumed by loneliness and her love/hate relationship with her patriarchal father…. Her ravings are so unreliable that it is hard to know what to believe, and she herself is drawn into a physically degrading yet spiritually enriching relationship with the [husband of her father's mistress].

What the book is about basically is a spiritual search for God, for a reaching out beyond the restrictions imposed by Calvinism; but above all it is a search for the self. I can hardly recall a work more steeped in the authentic and historical South African situation. Over it all hangs a brooding intensity, intermixed with a crazy humor. Coetzee is not one for easy answers or for cashing in on the market for the slick novel on the South African "racial problem." Thank goodness.