Awards
Winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature
Synopses & Reviews
A major new novel from the Nobel Prizewinning author of Waiting for the Barbarians, The Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace Nobel laureate and two-time Booker Prize winner J. M. Coetzee returns with a haunting and surprising novel about childhood and destiny that is sure to rank with his classic novels.
Separated from his mother as a passenger on a boat bound for a new land, David is a boy who is quite literally adrift. The piece of paper explaining his situation is lost, but a fellow passenger, Simón, vows to look after the boy. When the boat docks, David and Simón are issued new names, new birthdays, and virtually a whole new life.
Strangers in a strange land, knowing nothing of their surroundings, nor the language or customs, they are determined to find Davids mother. Though the boy has no memory of her, Simón is certain he will recognize her at first sight. But after we find her,” David asks, what are we here for?”
An eerie allegorical tale told largely through dialogue, The Childhood of Jesus is a literary feata novel of ideas that is also a tender, compelling narrative. Coetzees many fans will celebrate his return while new readers will find The Childhood of Jesus an intriguing introduction to the work of a true master.
Review
"Elizabeth Costello has real novelistic force. Our pleasure is watching this fascinating woman wrestle with intellectual issues as if they are life-and-death matters and being convinced, in the end, that they are." Keir Graff, Booklist
Review
"Costello's rigid morality and probing intelligence finally illuminate the fundamental question of what it means to be human. An intense and challenging novel; highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"[A] disappointing hybrid that cannot, except by the loosest possible definition, be called fiction....As argument, literate, impassioned, and disturbing; as fiction, overemphatic and often dull. Perhaps only for Coetzee's most ardent admirers." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Even more uncompromising than usual....It is a resounding achievement by Coetzee and one that will linger with the reader long after its reverberating conclusion." Publishers Weekly
Review
"[D]oes Elizabeth Costello succeed artistically, as a
work of fiction? The answer is yes, but more despite its
metafictional superstructure than because of it....Coetzee's unflinching exploration of this desolate and strangely beautiful terrain represents the cruelest and best use to which literature can be put." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"The main question in this novel of ideas: What does Costello believe in? [Costello's] given her life over to words to the exclusion of her children, her sister, who's a nun in Africa, and who doesn't believe in 'the novel' or anything similarly humanistic but even words have betrayed her by the book's overwhelming conclusion." Adrienne Miller, Esquire (read the entire Esquire review)
Synopsis
In 1982, J. M. Coetzee dazzled the literary world with the now classic
Waiting for the Barbarians. Five novels and two Booker prizes later, Coetzee is a writer of international stature and a novelist whose publication of a new work is heralded as a literary event. Now, in his first work of fiction since the
New York Times bestselling
Disgrace, he has crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale.
Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through an ingenious series of eight formal addresses. From an award-acceptance speech at a New England liberal arts college to a lecture on evil in Amsterdam and a sexually charged reading by the poet Robert Duncan, Coetzee draws the reader inexorably toward its astonishing conclusion.
Vividly imagined and masterfully wrought in his unerring prose, Elizabeth Costello is, on its surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling that only a writer of Coetzee's caliber could accomplish.
Synopsis
Nobel Prize winner Coetzee has crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale of an Australian novelist whose life is revealed through a series of eight formal addresses.
Synopsis
Since 1982, J. M. Coetzee has been dazzling the literary world. After eight novels that have won, among other awards, two Booker Prizes, and most recently, the Nobel Prize, Coetzee has once again crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale. Told through an ingenious series of formal addresses,
Elizabeth Costello is, on the surface, the story of a woman?s life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.
Synopsis
The high-spirited correspondence between New York Times bestselling author Paul Auster and Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other’s books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, “God willing, strike sparks off each other.”
Here and Now is the result of that proposal: the epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, film festivals to incest, philosophy to politics, from the financial crisis to art, death, family, marriage, friendship, and love.
Their correspondence offers an intimate and often amusing portrait of these two men as they explore the complexities of the here and now and is a reflection of two sharp intellects whose pleasure in each other’s friendship is apparent on every page.
Synopsis
[A] civilized discourse between two cultivated and sophisticated men. . . . Its a pleasure to be in their company.” Michael Dirda, The Washington Post After a meeting at an Australian literary festival brought them together in 2008, novelists Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee began exchanging letters on a regular basis with the hope they might strike sparks off each other." Here and Now is the result: a three-year epistolary dialogue that touches on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, literature to film, philosophy to politics, from the financial crisis to art, death, eroticism, marriage, friendship, and love. Their high-spirited and luminous correspondence offers an intimate and often amusing portrait of these two men as they explore the complexities of the here and now and reveal their pleasure in each others friendship on every page.
Synopsis
Since 1982, J. M. Coetzee has been dazzling the literary world. After eight novels that have won, among other awards, two Booker Prizes, and most recently, the Nobel Prize, Coetzee has once again crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale. Told through an ingenious series of formal addresses,
Elizabeth Costello is, on the surface, the story of a woman?s life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.
Synopsis
A major new novel from the Nobel Prizewinning author of Waiting for the Barbarians, The Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace Nobel laureate and two-time Booker Prize winner J. M. Coetzee returns with a haunting and surprising novel about childhood and destiny that is sure to rank with his classic novels.
Separated from his mother as a passenger on a boat bound for a new land, David is a boy who is quite literally adrift. The piece of paper explaining his situation is lost, but a fellow passenger, Simón, vows to look after the boy. When the boat docks, David and Simón are issued new names, new birthdays, and virtually a whole new life.
Strangers in a strange land, knowing nothing of their surroundings, nor the language or customs, they are determined to find Davids mother. Though the boy has no memory of her, Simón is certain he will recognize her at first sight. But after we find her,” David asks, what are we here for?”
An eerie allegorical tale told largely through dialogue, The Childhood of Jesus is a literary feata novel of ideas that is also a tender, compelling narrative. Coetzees many fans will celebrate his return while new readers will find The Childhood of Jesus an intriguing introduction to the work of a true master.
Synopsis
[A] civilized discourse between two cultivated and sophisticated men. . . . Its a pleasure to be in their company.” Michael Dirda, The Washington Post After a meeting at an Australian literary festival brought them together in 2008, novelists Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee began exchanging letters on a regular basis with the hope they might strike sparks off each other." Here and Now is the result: a three-year epistolary dialogue that touches on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, literature to film, philosophy to politics, from the financial crisis to art, death, eroticism, marriage, friendship, and love. Their high-spirited and luminous correspondence offers an intimate and often amusing portrait of these two men as they explore the complexities of the here and now and reveal their pleasure in each others friendship on every page.
About the Author
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940, John Michael 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.
Table of Contents
Realism -- Novel in Africa -- Lives of animals, the philosophers and the animals -- Lives of animals, the poets and the animals -- Humanities in Africa -- Problem of evil -- Eros -- At the gate -- Letter of Elizabeth, Lady Chandos.