When reading the South African prose writer J. M. Coetzee, analogies often arise either with the French “new novel” or with the painting of abstractionists - adherents of those schools who try to suppress “extra-textual” reality, reducing it to a minimum. But at the same time, Coetzee has his own voice, his own unique intonation, and unquenchable life breaks through his metaphors. J. M. Coetzee is a Nobel Prize laureate in 2003. The novel “Waiting for the Barbarians” was included in the list of the hundred best novels of all time, compiled in 2003 by The Observer newspaper.