Film Disgrace Opens Friday, September 18

Disgrace, based on the book by Nobel Prize Winner J. M. Coetzee, opens this Friday, September 18. Disgrace is the first novel to explore post apartheid South Africa. The novel won the Booker Prize in 1999 and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2000. Many consider it a contemporary classic. The film is directed by Steve Jacobs and stars John Malkovich as a South African professor who is fired after seducing a student. Daniel Davies in The Lancet acclaimed the book "Disgrace offers an apocalyptic vision of contemporary South Africa....What transforms Disgrace from a good compelling book into a work of brilliance is its allegorical reach." The screenplay was subject to Coetzee's approval, and he has praised the film for "integrating the story into the grand landscape of South Africa."