In the Heart of the Country: J.M. Coetzee

Stifled by the torpor of colonial South Africa and trapped in a web of reciprocal oppression, a lonely sheep farmer seeks comfort in the arms of a black concubine. But when his embittered spinster daughter Magda feels shamed, this lurch across the racial divide marks the end of a tenuous feudal peace.

As she dreams madly of bloody revenge, Magda`s consciousness starts to drift and the line between fact and the workings of her excited imagination becomes blurred. What follows is the fable of a woman`s passionate, obsessed and violent response to an Africa that will not heed her.