The second installment of J. M. Coetzee's fictionalized "memoir" explores a young man's struggle to experience life to its full intensity and transform it into art. The narrator of Youth has long been plotting an escape-from the stifling love of his overbearing mother, a father whose failures haunt him, and what he is sure is impending revolution in his native country of South Africa. Arriving at last in London in the 1960s, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance and instead begins a dark pilgrimage into adulthood. Youth is a remarkable portrait of a consciousness, isolated and adrift, turning in on itself, of a young man struggling to find his way in the world, written with tenderness and a fierce clarity.

"A delight to read: it will make you angry, amused, scornful and sympathetic by turns." (San Francisco Chronicle)

From the Booker Prize-winning author of "Disgrace" comes a second volume of memoir that "proves yet again that the awkward young man did indeed become a 'real artist'"--"The Wall Street Journal."

J. M. Coetzee is the author of seven works, including Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace, both of which were awarded the Booker Prize. A recipient of many literary awards, he is a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago.