In the Heart of the Country (1977) is an English language novel by J. M. Coetzee which delves in the complex relationships that form between the colonizer and the colonized. It takes place on an isolated farm in South Africa told through the perspective of an unmarried white woman who takes care of her father. She clashes with him when he takes an African mistress, causing a rift that leads towards vengeance, violence and a muddling of her own relationship with the farm workers. Frequently events are re-told by her with a different outcome.
In the U.S.A. the book was published as From the Heart of the Country. A motion picture adaptation, Dust, was directed by Marion Hänsel in 1985.
Famous quotes containing the words heart and/or country:
“Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and ere long it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)