A flower starts journey from the dust. The dust is sex for the disgaced David. The master craftman Mr. J. M. Coetzee transforms him into a full grown, aromatic flower at the end of the novel. It hardly matters it got Booker. It is one of the books of our century.

The language beside lucid is acidic. It entertains on one hand and pulls our ears to behave on another. Why David is disgraced? He was well for one year sex relation with a whore. Yes, it was a consented relationship. When a man behaves oppressively with a woman he must be punished. That's what Cotzee has established.

But his daughter's accceptance of the reality, in a strange way to bear a child of the neo-oppressor, reveals how women are adusting naturally to the changed environment. One who is ignorant of South Africa's present may not be able to swallow the tough pill. We, in India, see such incidences of women's oppression day in and day out. Especially in rural flock.

To start a novel with a disaster is a novelty that is fading its shine perhaps. But the licidity of the prose the author, Joyce Carol Oates has poured onto the pages is wonderful. Its a page turning one.