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:
“Let no one’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 17:32.
David, of Goliath.
“[F]rankly ... it was perfectly true that I had, for over a year, expressed the opinion that Indo-China should not go back to France but that it should be administered by an international trusteeship. France has had the country ... for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning.... France has milked it for one hundred years. The people of Indo-China are entitled to something better than that.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)