 Lurie returns to working with Shaw, where Lurie has been keeping a resilient stray from being euthanised.The novel concludes as Lurie "gives him up" to Bev Shaw's euthanasia.According to Adam Mars-Jones, writing in "The Guardian", "Any novel set in post-apartheid South Africa is fated to be read as a political portrait, but the fascination of "Disgrace" is the way it both encourages and contests such a reading by holding extreme alternatives in tension.