J. M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee once again breaks literary ground with Diary of a Bad Year, a book that is, in the words of its protagonist, a response to the present in which I find myself. Aging author Senor C has been commissioned to write a series of essays entitled Strong Opinions, of which he has many. After hiring a beautiful young typist named Anya, the two embark on a relationship that will have a profound impact on them both especially when Alan, Anya's no-good boyfriend develops designs on Senor C's bank account. Told in these three voices simultaneously, Coetzee has created an entirely new way of telling a story.

"J.M. Coetzee's vision goes to the nerve center of being. "—Nadine GordimerThe revolutionary first fiction by Nobel Prize Winner, J.M. CoetzeeA shattering pair of novellas in the tradition of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Dusklands probes the links between the powerful and the powerless. "Vietnam Project" is narrated by a researcher investigating the effectiveness of United States propaganda and psychological warfare in Vietnam. The question of power is also explored in "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee," the story of an eighteenth-century Boer frontiersman who vows revenge on the Hottentot natives because they have failed to treat him with the respect that he thinks a white man deserves. With striking intensity, J. M. Coetzee penetrates the twilight land of obsession, charting the nature on colonization as it seeks, in 1970 as in 1760, to absorb the wilds into the Western dusklands.2024 is the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Dusklands

<p>Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run. Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished Australian author in her mid-sixties celebrated for a novel she wrote decades earlier. In a series of eight ‘lessons’—the transcripts of lectures and speeches—she examines such subjects as animal rights, evil and the afterlife. Published in 2003, Elizabeth Costello was the first book J. M. Coetzee published in his new home of Australia. With its blurring of the lines between fiction and non-fiction, its rigorous interrogation of weighty ideas and moments of bleak comedy, the novel issued a new and complex challenge to Coetzee’s readers. J. M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He lives in Adelaide. ‘So bold and so clever that one wants to call it something other than a novel, to take it out of that commonplace genre.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘The book, one of Coetzee’s best, simply burns with creative passion.’ Independent ‘A readable and engaging book. Demanding, playful, provocative...hugely enlightening and rewarding.’ Sunday Times ‘In this strange but deeply satisfying book, Coetzee combines the two aspects of his literary personality in ways that may challenge some readers’ preconceptions about the relationship between imaginative and critical writing.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘Hypnotic and, in the end, irresistible.’ Australian Book Review ‘A resounding achievement...One that will linger with the reader long after its reverberating conclusion.’ Publishers Weekly</p> <p>Elizabeth Costello is an Australian writer of international renown. Famous principally for an early novel that established her reputation, she has reached the stage where her remaining function is to be venerated and applauded. </p><p></p><p>Her life has become a series of engagements in sterile conference rooms throughout the world - a private consciousness obliged to reveal itself to a curious public: the presentation of a major award at an American college where she is required to deliver a lecture; a sojourn as the writer in residence on a cruise liner; a visit to her sister, a missionary in Africa, who is receiving an honorary degree, an occasion which both recognise as the final opportunity for effecting some form of reconciliation; and a disquieting appearance at a writers' conference in Amsterdam where she finds the subject of her talk unexpectedly amongst the audience. </p><p></p><p>She has made her life's work the study of other people yet now it is she who is the... <p>Elizabeth Costello is an Australian writer of international renown. Famous principally for an early novel that established her reputation, she has reached the stage where her remaining function is to be venerated and applauded. </p><p></p><p>Her life has become a series of engagements in sterile conference rooms throughout the world - a private consciousness obliged to reveal itself to a curious public: the presentation of a major award at an American college where she is required to deliver a lecture; a sojourn as the writer in residence on a cruise liner; a visit to her sister, a missionary in Africa, who is receiving an honorary degree, an occasion which both recognise as the final opportunity for effecting some form of reconciliation; and a disquieting appearance at a writers' conference in Amsterdam where she finds the subject of her talk unexpectedly amongst the audience. </p><p></p><p>She has made her life's work the study of other people yet now it is she who is the...

<p>Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee reimagines Daniel DeFoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe in Foe. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe.</p> <p>In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Friday survive the journey back to London.</p> <p>Determined to have her story told, she pursues the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe in the hope that he will relate truthfully her memories to the world. But with Cruso dead, Friday incapable of speech and Foe himself intent on reshaping her narrative, Barton struggles to maintain her grip on the past, only to fall victim to the seduction of storytelling itself.</p> <p>Treacherous, elegant and unexpectedly moving, Foe remains one of the most exquisitely composed of this pre-eminent author's works.'A small miracle of a book. . . of marvellous intricacy and overwhelming power' Washington Post'A superb novel' The New York Times</p> <p><b>Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of <i>Disgrace </i>and <i>The Life and Times of Michael K</i>, J. M. Coetzee reimagines Daniel DeFoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe in <i>Foe</i>. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.</b> </p><p> </p><p>In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe.</p><p></p><p>In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Friday survive the journey back to London.</p><p></p><p>Determined to have her story told, she pursues the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe in the hope that he will relate truthfully her memories to the...

<p>Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee reimagines Daniel DeFoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe in Foe. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe.</p> <p>In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Friday survive the journey back to London.</p> <p>Determined to have her story told, she pursues the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe in the hope that he will relate truthfully her memories to the world. But with Cruso dead, Friday incapable of speech and Foe himself intent on reshaping her narrative, Barton struggles to maintain her grip on the past, only to fall victim to the seduction of storytelling itself.</p> <p>Treacherous, elegant and unexpectedly moving, Foe remains one of the most exquisitely composed of this pre-eminent author's works.'A small miracle of a book. . . of marvellous intricacy and overwhelming power' Washington Post'A superb novel' The New York Times</p> <p><b>Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of <i>Disgrace </i>and <i>The Life and Times of Michael K</i>, J. M. Coetzee reimagines Daniel DeFoe's classic novel Robinson Crusoe in <i>Foe</i>. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.</b> </p><p> </p><p>In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe.</p><p></p><p>In the early eighteenth century, Susan Barton finds herself adrift from a mutinous ship and cast ashore on a remote desert island. There she finds shelter with its only other inhabitants: a man named Cruso and his tongueless slave, Friday. In time, she builds a life for herself as Cruso's companion and, eventually, his lover. At last they are rescued by a passing ship, but only she and Friday survive the journey back to London.</p><p></p><p>Determined to have her story told, she pursues the eminent man of letters Daniel Foe in the hope that he will relate truthfully her memories to the...

Today my father brought home his new bride. Magda lives on an isolated farm in South Africa with her callous father and their staff, who treat her with disdain. Her psychological state, already precarious, disintegrates when her father takes a black mistress, and a tenuous feudal peace is shattered. In prose rich and vivid, Coetzee re-enacts the colonial experience in the home and in the psyche of one woman, who will not let history overlook her. ‘A realistic fable, at once stark, exciting and economical.’ New York Times Book Review ‘I have known few authors who can evoke such a wilderness in the heart of a man...Mr. Coetzee knows the elusive terror of Kafka.’ Sunday Times SUMMARY: 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. 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. 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.

Literary Essays 2000-2005 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Derek Attridge J.M. Coetzee’s work includesWaiting for the Barbarians;Life and Times of Michael K;Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life;Youth;Disgrace; and most recently,Slow Man. He has won the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.A collection of essays on literature by one of the world’s finest writers. Following on fromStranger Shores, which contained J.M. Coetzee’s essays from 1986 to 1999,Inner Workingsgathers together his literary essays from 2000 to 2005.Of the writers discussed in the first half of the book, several — Italo Svevo, Joseph Roth, Bruno Schulz, Sandor Marai — lived through the Austro-Hungarian fin-de-siècle and felt the influence of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud. Coetzee further explores the work of six of twentieth-century German literature’s greatest writers: Robert Musil, Robert Walser, Walter Benjamin (the Arcades Project), Joseph Roth, Gunter Grass, W.G. Sebald, and the poet Paul Celan, in his “wrestlings with the German language.”There is an essay on Graham Greene’sBrighton Rockand on the short fiction of Samuel Beckett, a writer whom Coetzee has long admired. American literature is strongly represented by Walt Whitman through William Faulkner, Saul Bellow and Arthur Miller to Philip Roth. Coetzee rounds off the collection with essays on three fellow Nobel laureates: Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and V.S. Naipaul. “Coetzee the critic is every bit as good as Coetzee the novelist.”–Irish Times“Coetzee writes well about the technicalities of literature: like an engineer he dismantles the texts and suggests ways in which they might run more efficiently.”–Scotland on Sunday

<p>In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience - the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision.'This is a truly astonishing novel... I finished Life &amp; Times of Michael K in a state of elation, for all the misery and suffering it contains. I cannot recommend it highly enough' Evening Standard</p> <div> <p>About the Author </p> <p>J.M. Coetzee is a professor of general literature at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of seven novels, including <strong>The Master of Petersbur</strong><em>g</em>, and of the memoir <strong>Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life</strong>. His many awards include the Booker Prize in 1983 for <strong>The Life &amp; Times of Michael K</strong>, the Prix Femina and the <em>Irish Times</em> International Fiction Prize. J.M. Coetzee is the first author ever to be awarded two Booker Prizes. </p> <p> </p> <p>SUMMARY:<br>In A South Africa Torn By Civil War, Michael K Sets Out To Take His Mother Back To Her Rural Home. On The Way There She Dies, Leaving Him Alone In An Anarchic World Of Brutal Roving Armies. Imprisoned, Michael Is Unable To Bear Confinement And Escapes, Determined To Live With Dignity. Life And Times Of Michael K Goes To The Centre Of Human Experience - The Need For An Interior, Spiritual Life, For Some Connections To The World In Which We Live, And For Purity Of Vision.</p></div> In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. <i>Life and Times of Michael K</i> goes to the centre of human experience - the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision.

<p>In one volume, JM Coetzee's majestic trilogy of fictionalised memoir, Boyhood, Youth and Summertime.</p> <p>Scenes from Provincial Life opens in a small town in the South Africa of the 1940s. We meet a young boy who, at home, is ill at ease with his father and stifled by his mother's unconditional love. At school he passes every test that is set for him, but he remains wary of his fellow pupils, especially the rough Afrikaners. As a student of mathematics in Cape Town he readies himself to escape his homeland, travel to Europe and turn himself into an artist. Once in London, however, the reality is dispiriting: he toils as a computer programmer, inhabits a series of damp, dreary flats and is haunted by loneliness and boredom. He is a constitutional outsider. He fails to write. Decades later, an English biographer researches a book about the late John Coetzee, particularly the period following his return to South Africa from America. Interviewees describe an awkward man still living with his father, a man who insists on performing dull manual labour. His family regard him with suspicion and he is dogged by rumours: that he crossed the authorities in America, that he writes poetry. Scenes from Provincial Life is a heartbreaking and often very funny portrait of the artist by one of the world's greatest writers.</p> <p>Scenes from Provincial Life opens in a small town in the South Africa of the 1940s. We meet a young boy who, at home, is ill at ease with his father and stifled by his mother's unconditional love. At school he passes every test that is set for him, but he remains wary of his fellow pupils, especially the rough Afrikaners. As a student of mathematics in Cape Town he readies himself to escape his homeland, travel to Europe and turn himself into an artist. Once in London, however, the reality is dispiriting: he toils as a computer programmer, inhabits a series of damp, dreary flats and is haunted by loneliness and boredom. He is a constitutional outsider. He fails to write. Decades later, an English biographer researches a book about the late John Coetzee, particularly the period following his return to South Africa from America. Interviewees describe an awkward man still living with his father, a man who insists on performing dull manual labour. His family regard him with...

<p>Paul Rayment is on the threshold of a comfortable old age when a calamitous cycling accident results in the amputation of a leg. Humiliated, his body truncated, his life circumscribed, he turns away from his friends. He hires a nurse named Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: hers in Croatia, his in France. Tactfully and efficiently she ministers to his needs. But his feelings for her, and for her handsome teenage son, are complicated by the sudden arrival on his doorstep of the celebrated Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello, who threatens to take over the direction of his life and the affairs of his heart.</p> <p>Paul Rayment is on the threshold of a comfortable old age when a calamitous cycling accident results in the amputation of a leg. Humiliated, his body truncated, his life circumscribed, he turns away from his friends. He hires a nurse named Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: hers in Croatia, his in France. Tactfully and efficiently she ministers to his needs. But his feelings for her, and for her handsome teenage son, are complicated by the sudden arrival on his doorstep of the celebrated Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello, who threatens to take over the direction of his life and the affairs of his heart. Unflinching in its vision of suffering and generous in its portrayal of the spirit of care, Slow Man is a masterful work of fiction by one of the world's greatest writers.

<div><h3>From Publishers Weekly</h3><p>Starred Review. Nobel laureate and two-time Booker-winner Coetzee has been shortlisted for the third time for this powerful novel, a semisequel to the fictionalized memoirs <em>Boyhood</em> and <em>Youth</em> that takes the form of a young biographer's interviews with colleagues of the late author John Coetzee. To Dr. Julia Frankl, who briefly sought in Coetzee deliverance from her husband, he was not fully human; to his cousin, Margot Jonker, he is boring, ridiculous and misguided; and to Sophie Denoël, an expert in African literature, Coetzee is an underwhelming writer with no original insight into the human condition. The harshest characterization—and also the best of the interviews—comes from Adriana Nascimento, a Brazilian emigrant who met Coetzee when both were teachers in Cape Town; she was repulsed by the intellectual's attempts at courtship. He is nothing, she says, was nothing... an embarrassment. The biographer's efforts to describe his subject ultimately result in an examination that reaches through fiction and memoir to grasp what the traditional record leaves out. <em>(Jan.)</em> <br>Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. </p><h3>Review</h3><p>"This is the third instalment of a life so reserved, so repressed, so seething with polite rage and restrained despair that it could only be approached through a third-person voice... it is wonderful stuff. But then, Coetzee is wonderful: edgy, black, remorselessly human, witty, and often outright funny... Summertime is offbeat and deliberate, elusive and truthful." <br>--_Irish Times <br>_<br>"The cumulative effect of Coetzee's unblinking honesty and his never-wavering seriousness, is an understanding of the creation of a great writer." <br>--_Sunday Telegraph_ </p><p>"Beautifully reflective... reveal a strangely sincere, self-critical and romantic man... an intense outstanding and very enjoyable talent." --Scotland on Sunday "Both an elegant request that the sum of Coetzee's existence as a public figure be looked for only in his writing, and ample evidence, once again, why that request should be honoured." <br>--_Observer_ </p><p><em>From the Trade Paperback edition.</em></p> </div> <p>A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on a period in the seventies when, the biographer senses, Coetzee was 'finding his feet as a writer'. He embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to Coetzee - a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. Thus emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual, regarded as an outsider within the family. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, and rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time.</p>

This is an extraordinary new fable from one of the world's greatest living novelists, two-time Booker Prize winner and Nobel Laureate. David is a small boy who comes by boat across the ocean to a new country. He has been separated from his parents, and has lost the piece of paper that would have explained everything. On the boat a stranger named Simon takes it upon himself to look after the boy. On arrival they are assigned new names, new birthdates. They know little Spanish, the language of their new country, and nothing about its customs. They have also suffered a kind of forgetting of old attachments and feelings. They are people without a past. Simon's goal is to find the boy's mother. He feels sure he will know her when he sees her. And David? He wants to find his mother too but he also wants to understand where he is and how he fits in. He is a boy who is always asking questions. The Childhood of Jesus is not like any other novel you have read. This beautiful and surprising fable is about childhood, about destiny, about being an outsider. It is a novel about the riddle of experience itself. J.M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He lives in Adelaide. 'Coetzee is a master we scarcely deserve.' Age 'Coetzee gradually, with great intelligence and skill, brings to extraordinary - possibly divine - life an ostensibly simple story.' Weekend Australian 'A theological and philosophical fable of considerable brilliance, power and wit. Coetzee hasn't done anything as fine and beautifully executed as this since Disgrace.' Canberra Times and Age '[A] quiet, haunting novel...Coetzee's calm, emblematic prose lifts the plot into something redolent with metaphor and mystery...Any statement can become a symbol; every event is suffused with potential revelation; something magical is always present and just out of reach...It's a memorable accomplishment, turning the everyday into the almost everlasting.' Weekend Herald (NZ) 'Double Booker Prize-winner Coetzee's fable has a dream-like, Kafkaesque quality. Are we in some kind of heaven, purgatory or simply another staging post of existence? Clear answers are elusive, but this is a riveting, thought-provoking read and surely Coetzee's best novel since Disgrace more than a decade ago.' Daily Mail 'Written with all of Coetzee's penetrating rigour, it will be an early contender for an unprecedented third Booker prize.' Observer 'The Childhood of Jesus represents a return to the allegorical mode that made him famous...a Kafkaesque version of the nativity story...The Childhood of Jesus does ample justice to his giant reputation: it's richly enigmatic, with regular flashes of Coetzee's piercing intelligence.' Guardian 'The sense of calm, furthered by Coetzee's spare prose, is very unsettling...These are not the horrors of Waiting for the Barbarians, this is the horror of banality.' Independent on Sunday This is an extraordinary new fable from one of the world's greatest living novelists, two-time Booker Prize winner and Nobel Laureate. The child is silent. For a while he too is silent. Then he speaks. 'Please believe me - please take it on faith - this is not a simple matter. The boy is without mother. What that means I cannot explain to you because I cannot explain it to myself. Yet I promise you, if you will simply say Yes, without forethought, without afterthought, all will become clear to you, as clear as day, or so I believe. Therefore: will you accept this child as yours?' David is a small boy who comes by boat across the ocean to a new country. He has been separated from his parents, and has lost the piece of paper that would have explained everything. On the boat a stranger named Simon takes it upon himself to look after the boy. On arrival they are assigned new names, new birthdates. They know little Spanish, the language of their new country, and nothing about its customs. They have also suffered a kind of forgetting of old attachments and feelings. They are people without a past. Simon's goal is to find the boy's mother. He feels sure he will know her when he sees her. And David? He wants to find his mother too but he also wants to understand where he is and how he fits in. He is a boy who is always asking questions. The Childhood of Jesus is not like any other novel you have read. This beautiful and surprising fable is about childhood, about destiny, about being an outsider. It is a novel about the riddle of experience itself. J.M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He lives in Adelaide. textpublishing.com.au 'Coetzee is a master we scarcely deserve.' Age 'Coetzee gradually, with great intelligence and skill, brings to extraordinary - possibly divine - life an ostensibly simple story.' Weekend Australian 'A theological and philosophical fable of considerable brilliance, power and wit. Coetzee hasn't done anything as fine and beautifully executed as this since Disgrace.' Canberra Times and Age 'Coetzee's characters play with conflicting ideas in a way that is at once disarmingly simple and maddeningly convoluted. The result is a delightful, stimulating puzzle. The Childhood of Jesus is a beautiful yet complex work that will reward the reader handsomely.' Mark Rubbo, Readings '[A] quiet, haunting novel...Coetzee's calm, emblematic prose lifts the plot into something redolent with metaphor and mystery...Any statement can become a symbol; every event is suffused with potential revelation; something magical is always present and just out of reach...It's a memorable accomplishment, turning the everyday into the almost everlasting.' Weekend Herald (NZ) Double Booker Prize-winner Coetzee's fable has a dream-like, Kafkaesque quality. Are we in some kind of heaven, purgatory or simply another staging post of existence? Clear answers are elusive, but this is a riveting, thought-provoking read and surely Coetzee's best novel since Disgrace more than a decade ago.' Daily Mail 'Written with all of Coetzee's penetrating rigour, it will be an early contender for an unprecedented third Booker prize.' Observer 'The Childhood of Jesus represents a return to the allegorical mode that made him famous...a Kafkaesque version of the nativity story...The Childhood of Jesus does ample justice to his giant reputation: it's richly enigmatic, with regular flashes of Coetzee's piercing intelligence.' Guardian 'The sense of calm, furthered by Coetzee's spare prose, is very unsettling...These are not the horrors of Waiting for the Barbarians, this is the horror of banality.' Independent on Sunday 'a breathtaking performance, full of the tears in things and the wonders of which we cannot speak' Peter Craven, Sydney Review of Books

<p>A man contemplates his deep connection to a house. The unfathomable idea of threshing wheat points to a life lost. And a writer ponders the creation of his narrator. Three Stories—‘His Man and He’, written as Coetzee’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, ‘A House in Spain’ and ‘Nietverloren’—is the work of a master at his peak. These are stories that embody the essence of our existence. J.M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace, Diary of a Bad Year and most recently, The Childhood of Jesus. He lives in Adelaide. ‘All [the stories are] impeccably crafted and a joy to read, with the book itself beautifully presented in duck egg blue and inlaid gold too.’ New Daily ‘For all the sharpness and sorrow of Coetzee’s writing, there is something grandly calming about his style: his sentences seem to give off light, and not in a hard dazzle, but in the glow of a child’s night-light.’ Age/Sydney Morning Herald ‘Coetzee’s strength as a writer is such that each of the stories is engaging, thought-provoking and highly readable.’ West Australian</p> <p>A man contemplates his deep connection to a house. </p><p>The unfathomable idea of threshing wheat points to a life lost. </p><p>And a writer ponders the creation of his narrator. </p><p><i>Three Stories</i>—‘His Man and He’, written as Coetzee’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, ‘A House in Spain’ and ‘Nietverloren’—is the work of a master at his peak. These are stories that embody the essence of our existence.</p><p><b>J.M. Coetzee</b> was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes <i>Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace, Diary of a Bad Year</i> and most recently, <i>The Childhood of Jesus</i>. He lives in Adelaide.</p><p>‘All [the stories are] impeccably crafted and a joy to read, with the book itself beautifully presented in duck egg blue and inlaid gold too.’ <i>New Daily</i></p><p>‘For all the sharpness and sorrow...

«Per un uomo della sua età, cinquantadue anni, divorziato, gli sembra di avere risolto il problema del sesso piuttosto bene». Ma forse non è cosí, se una sera David Lurie, insegnante alla Cape Town University, invita un'allieva a bere qualcosa, poi a mangiare un boccone, e infine a passare la notte con lui. Una notte che non resta isolata, che diventa una storia e che finisce con una denuncia per molestie sessuali. Allontanato dall'università, David chiede ospitalità alla figlia Lucy in campagna, nella parte orientale della Provincia del Capo, dove la convivenza tra diverse etnie, diverse tradizioni, diversi Sudafrica è aspra come la terra che Lucy coltiva. David tenta di adeguarsi alla nuova vita: dà una mano nei campi, aiuta una conoscente alla clinica veterinaria. Soprattutto, tenta di adeguarsi alla donna indipendente che è diventata sua figlia. Ma come tollerare anche la violenza che Lucy ha scelto di accettare? Vincitore del Booker Prize nel 1999, Vergogna mette in scena le trasformazioni del Sudafrica post-apartheid raccontando - come ha scritto il «Sunday Times» - «una storia dura, scritta in una prosa di scarna, aspra bellezza, che conferma Coetzee come uno dei nostri migliori narratori di oggi».