David Lurie, professor of communication at Cape Town Technical University, is 52 and twice divorced. He teaches halfheartedly, but he is more interested in the poet Lord Byron. Although Lurie visits a prostitute regularly, he becomes smitten with Melanie, one of his students. He seduces her (or was it rape?), she lodges formal charges against him, and he's forced to resign from the university. The disgrace begins.

Lurie leaves Cape Town for a time to live with his daughter Lucy in the country. Here Lurie experiences the complex relationships between blacks and whites in post-apartheid South Africa. While he is staying with Lucy, three black strangers employ a ruse to enter the house, which they rob and vandalize. One of them burns and temporarily blinds Lurie. Before long Lurie realizes that while he was being attacked, Lucy was being raped by another intruder. More disgrace.

While living with his daughter and recovering from his injuries, Lurie volunteers at an animal clinic where he assists in euthanizing unwanted dogs. Finally, he seems capable of compassion. After tensions between Lurie and his daughter increase when he cannot understand why she keeps her pregnancy, he returns to his house in Cape Town, only to find it vandalized. Further disgrace.

Eventually, he immerses himself in writing an opera based on the last years of Byron's life. Creating this opera about his beloved Byron and befriending dogs in their final moments seem to be Lurie's way of balancing the disgrace that has crept into his life.

At times it is difficult to read the blunt descriptions of disturbing events in this novel. Yet at the same time it is a pleasure to read because of Coetzee's ability to describe and narrate in precise, sparse, and powerful language.