Disgrace - set in post-apartheid Cape Town and on a remote farm in the Eastern Cape - is deft, lean, quiet, and brutal. A heartbreaking novel about a man and his daughter, Disgrace is a portrait of the new South Africa that is ultimately about grace and love, hate and sorrow. At fifty-two Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire but lacking passion. An affair with one of his students leaves him jobless and friendless, except for his daughter, Lucy, who works her smallholding with her neighbor, Petrus, an African farmer now on the way to a modest prosperity....
Silas Marner (originally published in 1861): Betrayed by a beloved friend and accused of a crime he didn’t commit, awkward Silas Marner is expelled from his beloved religious community — the only community he has ever known. He exiles himself in the remote village of Raveloe. Friendless and without family, set apart from the villagers by their superstition and fear of him, he plies his weaving trade day after day, storing up gold which becomes his idol.