Two-time Booker Prize winner J.M. Coetzee's modern classic, soon to be adapted into a film starring Mark Rylance, Robert Pattinson, and Johnny Depp. For decades, the Magistrate has presided over the affairs of a small border town, ignoring the impending war between the barbarians and the Empire, of which he is a servant. But when the interrogation experts arrive, he suddenly feels sympathy for the victims and embarks on a quixotic act of rebellion, landing him in prison as an enemy of the state. "Waiting for the Barbarians" is an allegory of oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate represents not only a man facing a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; he symbolizes all those who live in complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.