All of the themes I expect from Coetzee are here and gestating in embryonic overwrought prose with a postmodern bent that critiques written and oral South African history and contemporary (70s contemporary) imperialism as seen in America's involvement in the Vietnam War, but it's all so grating and slow and does not have the efficiency and confidence of his later novels. Cool beginning though. Deeply strange and with images that have left me a tad shaken, even if the stories have a tendency to bore.