In The Heart of The Country

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.