J.M. Coetzee

Diary of a Bad Year – ARC

Added on February 5, 2013

Diary of a Bad Year – Advance Readers Copy J.M. Coetzee Text, Australia, 2007 This brilliant book combines essays on a wide range of topics for a fictional publication entitled Strong Opinions, and diary entries about the relationship the aging essayist develops with his young typist. The essays run at the top of each page, while [...]

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Slow Man

Added on September 8, 2012

Slow Man J.M. Coetzee Viking, U.S.A. 2005 Slow Man was Coetzee’s first novel after winning the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature. It is a brilliant look at the relationship between the writer and his characters. Although the reviews for this book were mixed, I personally find it to be one of his greatest achievements. The [...]

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Life & Times of Michael K

Added on June 5, 2011

Life & Times of Michael K J. M. Coetzee Viking, U.S.A. 1984 This Booker Prize winning novel by J.M. Coetzee follows Michael K, a simple black gardener with a hare-lip, through civil war-torn urban South Africa to his mother’s rural farm. It takes place at the height of apartheid in the late 1970′s and early 80′s. [...]

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Summertime

Added on March 4, 2011

Summertime J.M. Coetzee Harvill Secker, London, 2009 Summertime is the third in a series of fictionalized memoirs by Coetzee. The first two are Boyhood and Youth. These three books show Coetzee at his best; pushing the boundaries of literature and really getting to the core of what it is to be human. I bought this [...]

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In the Heart of the Country

Added on February 6, 2011

In the Heart of the Country J.M. Coetzee Ravan Press, South Africa, 1978 This South African novel, about the complex relationship between the colonizers and the colonized, reads like a fevered dream. Is it real, or are these the mad hallucinations of our isolated and lonely protagonist? This paperback original is the stated first South [...]

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Slow Man

Added on January 15, 2011

Slow Man J.M. Coetzee Random House, Australia, 2005 This Australian first printing is the true first edition of Slow Man, Coetzee’s first novel after winning the Nobel Prize. Slow Man would be put out slightly later by Secker and Warburg in England and then by Viking in the States a month or so after that. [...]

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Elizabeth Costello

Added on January 11, 2011

Elizabeth Costello J.M. Coetzee Viking, U.S.A. 2003 This brilliant story is constructed around eight speeches given by the fictional aging novelist for whom this book is named. Six of the speeches are edited versions of essays previously published by Coetzee. In general, the essays are philosophical pieces about what it is to be human. Coetzee got mixed [...]

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Age of Iron

Added on November 8, 2010

Age of Iron J.M. Coetzee Martin, Secker and Warburg, London, 1990 An old white woman living in Capetown during the apartheid era is dying of cancer. She has always been an opponent of apartheid, but she was insulated form the worst of it, that is, until her black housekeeper’s son brings her into the dark [...]

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Diary of a Bad Year

Added on October 27, 2010

Diary of a Bad Year J.M. Coetzee Text Publishing, Australia, 2007 Coetzee allowed the small Australian publishing house, Text, to put out the true first printing of this cerebral masterpiece, although the British first edition came out just 3 days later. Two and then three narratives running simultaneously, this novel can be read in a [...]

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Life & Times of Michael K – copy #2

Added on July 13, 2010

Life & Times of Michael K J.M. Coetzee Viking, U.S.A. 1984 This is my second signed copy of Coetzee’s Booker Prize winning novel set in civil war-torn Johannesburg. It is, most unusually, signed on the dust jacket. The person I bought it from said that he had caught Coetzee at the end of a writer’s [...]

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