Synopses & Reviews
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
From the Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee, the haunting sequel to The Childhood of Jesus, continuing the journey of David, Simon, and Ines
"When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins."
David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simon and Ines take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolivar to watch over him. But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, with the guidance of the three sisters who own the farm where Simon and Ines work, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it's here, too, that he will make troubling discoveries about what grown-ups are capable of. In this mesmerizing allegorical tale, Coetzee deftly grapples with the big questions of growing up, of what it means to be a "parent," the constant battle between intellect and emotion, and how we choose to live our lives.
Review
"As compelling, and confounding, as its predecessor." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Many scenes have the qualities of miniature Socratic dialogues. Their pleasures are pure, as Coetzee has cleared away modern prejudices and stripped his characters’ philosophical conversations to a skeletal core... there’s a stark beauty to these novels of ideas and the haunting images that infuse them: a young boy pondering a bird with a broken wing, a beautiful woman turned blue by death, an old man trying to dance." New York Magazine
Review
"Freed from literary convention, Coetzee writes not to provide answers, but to ask great questions." The Economist
About the Author
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940, John Maxwell Coetzee studied first at Cape Town and later at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in literature. In 1972 he returned to South Africa and joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town. His works of fiction include Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won South Africa’s highest literary honor, the Central News Agency Literary Award, and the Life and Times of Michael K., for which Coetzee was awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. He has also published a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life, and several essays collections. He has won many other literary prizes including the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize. In 1999 he again won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for Disgrace, becoming the first author to win the award twice in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.