Waiting for the Barbarians
A magistrate on the frontier of an unnamed empire discovers that decency costs more than he is willing to pay.
A magistrate administers a quiet frontier town for an unnamed Empire until the Third Bureau arrives, takes prisoners from the nomadic people beyond the border, and tortures them into confirming an invasion nobody has seen. His attempt to make amends is halting, compromised and self-regarding, and the Empire turns on him for it. Coetzee published it in 1980, and though the setting is deliberately unplaced, its account of how a state manufactures the enemy it needs has never read as historical.
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Abdulrazak Gurnah
The setting is precise in physical details, but its location is not named. However, it is difficult not to see the novel as a parable of apartheid South Africa and the dilemma of the liberal in that context, who is driven by a desire for reprieve but whose gesture made to achieve it is ineffectual. A work of great accomplishment.
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