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Is it possible for love to flourish between an oppressor and one who is oppressed? J.M. Coetzee, in his novel Waiting for the Barbarians, thought not, but Coetzee provided some compensation for his hero by ennobling him to an almost mythical degree in order to present the argument that power can be used equally to fight injustice and brutality, or to inflict it. The main character in Coetzee’s novel, the Magistrate, recognises the pathology inherent in his love for a captured ‘barbarian’, and chooses to return her to her·people. He then becomes a victim himself as he fights the atrocities being perpetrated around him.
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