Book Lists

New Releases by J. M. Coetzee

J. M. Coetzee is the author of The Pole and Other Stories (2023), The Death of Jesus (2020), Dusklands (2017), The Master of Petersburg (2017), In the Heart of the Country (2017).

26 results found

The Pole and Other Stories

release date: Oct 19, 2023
The Pole and Other Stories
A pianist falls grandly, helplessly in love in this elegant new novella from the twice-Booker Prize winner The Pole tells the story of Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a vigorous, white-haired pianist, who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his Barcelona concert. Although Beatriz, who is married, is initially unimpressed by Wittold, she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept into his world. As he sends her letters, extends countless invitations to travel, and even visits her husband''s summer home in Mallorca, their unlikely relationship blossoms, though only on her terms. As the power struggle between them intensifies -- Is it Beatriz who limits their passion by controlling her emotions? Or is it Wittold, trying to force into life his dream of love? Evocative of Joyce''s ''The Dead,'' The Pole is a haunting work, evoking the ''inexhaustible palette of sensations, from blind love to compassion'' (El País) typical of Coetzee''s finest novels. Published together with five exceptional stories, this new work from one of our greatest writers is a must for all literary connoisseurs.

The Death of Jesus

release date: Feb 21, 2020
The Death of Jesus
A masterful new novel completes an incomparable trilogy from J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate and two-times winner of the Booker Prize In The Childhood of Jesus, Simòn found a boy, David, and they began life in a new land, together with a woman named Inès. In The Schooldays of Jesus, the small family searched for a home in which David could thrive. In The Death of Jesus, David, now a tall ten-year-old, is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends in the street. He shows unusual talent. When David announces that he wants to go and live with Julio and the children in his care, Simòn and Inès are stunned. David is leaving them, and they can only love him and bear witness. With almost unbearable poignancy J. M. Coetzee explores the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.

Dusklands

release date: Aug 01, 2017
Dusklands
"J.M. Coetzee''s vision goes to the nerve center of being."—Nadine Gordimer The revolutionary first fiction by Nobel Prize Winner, J.M. Coetzee A 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

The Master of Petersburg

release date: Jun 06, 2017
The Master of Petersburg
J.M. Coetzee''s latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. In the fall of 1869 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, lately a resident of Germany, is summoned back to St. Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, Pavel. Half crazed with grief, stricken by epileptic seizures, and erotically obsessed with his stepson''s landlady, Dostoevsky is nevertheless intent on unraveling the enigma of Pavel''s life. Was the boy a suicide or a murder victim? Did he love his stepfather or despise him? Was he a disciple of the revolutionary Nechaev, who even now is somewhere in St. Petersburg pursuing a dream of apocalyptic violence? As he follows his stepson''s ghost—and becomes enmeshed in the same demonic conspiracies that claimed the boy—Dostoevsky emerges as a figure of unfathomable contradictions: naive and calculating, compassionate and cruel, pious and unspeakably perverse.

In the Heart of the Country

release date: May 30, 2017
In the Heart of the Country
A story told in prose as feverishly rich as William Faulkner''s, In the Heart of the Country is a work of irresistable power. J.M. Coetzee''s latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. On a remote farm in South Africa, the protagonist of J. M. Coetzee''s fierce and passionate novel watches the life from which she has been excluded. Ignored by her callous father, scorned and feared by his servants, she is a bitterly intelligent woman whose outward meekness disguises a desperate resolve not to become "one of the forgotten ones of history." When her father takes an African mistress, that resolve precipitates an act of vengeance that suggests a chemical reaction between the colonizer and the colonized—and between European yearnings and the vastness and solitude of Africa. With vast assurance and an unerring eye, J. M. Coetzee has turned the family romance into a mirror of the colonial experience.

Slow Man

release date: Apr 04, 2017
Slow Man
J.M. Coetzee''s latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. J. M. Coetzee, one of the greatest living writers in the English language, has crafted a deeply moving tale of love and mortality in his new book, Slow Man. When photographer Paul Rayment loses his leg in a bicycle accident, he is forced to reexamine how he has lived his life. Through Paul''s story, Coetzee addresses questions that define us all: What does it mean to do good? What in our lives is ultimately meaningful? How do we define the place we call "home"? In his clear and uncompromising voice, Coetzee struggles with these issues and offers a story that will dazzle the reader on every page.

The Good Story

release date: Sep 27, 2016
The Good Story
J.M. Coetzee''s latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. J.M. Coetzee: What relationship do I have with my life history? Am I its conscious author, or should I think of myself as simply a voice uttering with as little interference as possible a stream of words welling up from my interior? Arabella Kurtz: One way of thinking about psychoanalysis is to say that it is aimed at setting free the narrative or autobiographical imagination. The Good Story is a fascinating dialogue about psychotherapy and the art of storytelling between a writer with a long-standing interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with training in literary studies. Coetzee and Kurtz consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both of their approaches is a concern with narrative. Working alone, the writer is in control of the story he or she tells. The therapist, on the other hand, collaborates with the patient in developing an account of the patient''s life and identity that is both meaningful and true. In a meeting of minds that is illuminating and thought-provoking, the authors discuss both individual psychology and the psychology of the group: the school classroom, gangs and the settler nation, in which the brutal deeds of ancestors are accommodated into a national story. Drawing on great writers like Cervantes and Dostoevsky and psychoanalysts like Freud and Melanie Klein, Coetzee and Kurtz explore the human capacity for self-examination, our wish to tell our own life stories and the resistances we encounter along the way.

The Schooldays of Jesus

release date: Sep 27, 2016
The Schooldays of Jesus
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. Davíd is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés 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 Bolívar to watch over him. But he''ll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, Davíd 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 mesmerising 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.

The Childhood of Jesus

release date: Sep 03, 2013
The Childhood of Jesus
From the Nobel Prize–winning author of Waiting for the Barbarians, The Life & 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 David’s 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 feat—a novel of ideas that is also a tender, compelling narrative. Coetzee’s 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.

Here and Now

release date: Mar 07, 2013
Here and Now
“[A] civilized discourse between two cultivated and sophisticated men. . . . It’s a pleasure to be in their company.”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post “An extended meditation on the processes of friendship, [Here and Now] has something substantive to offer.”—The New York Times Book Review 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, 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 delight in each other’s friendship on every page.

Escenes de la vida a províncies

release date: Nov 02, 2012
Escenes de la vida a províncies
J. M. Coetzee, Premi Nobel de Literatura 2003, és, a parer de molts, l''escriptor més important dels nostres temps. Poques vegades havia parlat de si mateix fins que el 1997 va sorprendre tothom amb Infantesa, el primer lliurament d''una ficció autobiogràfica que van seguir Joventut i Temps d''estiu.Per primera vegada, presentem en un sol volum la trilogia d''aquestes ficcions autobiogràfiques, les Escenes de la vida a províncies, revisades per l''autor, que posen en relleu la relació inquietant entre la realitat de la vida i la ficció dels llibres i conformen un magnífic retrat de l''artista. L''obra comença en una petita vila de la Sud-àfrica dels anys quaranta: un noi intenta trobar el seu lloc al món sota la tutela d''un pare distant i una mare que l''estima incondicionalment. Ja de jove, estudia matemàtiques a Ciutat del Cap, escriu poesia i viatja a Europa amb pretensions artístiques. La realitat, però, l''obliga a tocar de peus a terra i a treballar com a programador informàtic. La seva vida d''adult la coneixem gràcies al seu biògraf, un tal Mr. Vincent, que reconstrueix la vida del novel·lista en què s''ha convertit J. M. Coetzee passats els anys.

Scenes from Provincial Life

release date: Apr 24, 2012
Scenes from Provincial Life
The Nobel Prize–winning author''s brilliant trilogy of fictionalized memoirs—now available in one volume for the first time. J.M. Coetzee''s latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. Few writers have won as much critical acclaim and as many admirers in the literary world as J. M. Coetzee. Yet the celebrated author rarely spoke of himself until the 1997 arrival of Boyhood, a masterly and evocative tale of a young writer''s beginnings. Continuing with the fiercely tender Youth and the innovative Summertime, Scenes from Provincial Life is a heartbreaking and often very funny portrait of the artist by one of the world''s greatest writers.

Foe

release date: Sep 21, 2010
Foe
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. In an act of breathtaking imagination, J.M Coetzee radically reinvents the story of Robinson Crusoe. 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. 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. 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 South African author J. M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice for his novels Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K. His novel set during the South African apartheid, Age of Iron, winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year award is also available in Penguin paperback.

Waiting for the Barbarians

release date: Jun 29, 2010
Waiting for the Barbarians
A modern classic by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, now a major motion picture starring Robert Pattinson and Johnny Depp For decades the Magistrate has run the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement, ignoring the impending war between the barbarians and the Empire whose servant he is. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he finds himself jolted into sympathy with their victims—until their barbarous treatment of prisoners of war finally pushes him into a quixotic act of rebellion, and thus into imprisonment as an enemy of the state. Waiting for the Barbarians, J. M. Coetzee’s third novel, which won the James Tate Black Memorial Prize, is an allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that elevate their own survival above justice and decency.

Summertime

release date: Jan 01, 2009
Summertime
This brilliant new work of fiction from the Nobel Prize-winning author of "Disgrace" and "Diary of a Bad Year" allows Coetzee to imagine his own life, revealing painful moral struggles and attempts to come to grips with what it means to care for another human being.

Diary of a Bad Year

release date: Sep 01, 2007
Diary of a Bad Year
An eminent, seventy-two-year-old Australian writer is invited to contribute to a book entitled Strong Opinions. It is a chance to air some urgent concerns. He writes short essays on the origins of the state, on Machiavelli, on anarchism, on al Qaida, on intelligent design, on music. What, he asks, is the origin of the state and the nature of the relationship between citizen and state? How should the citizen of a modern democracy react to the state''s willingness to set aside moral considerations and civil liberties in its war on terror, a war that includes the use of torture? How does the state handle outsiders? The treatment of asylum seekers at the Baxter facility in the South Australian desert brings to his mind Guantanamo Bay. He is troubled by Australia''s complicity with America and Britain in their wars in the Middle East; an obscure sense of dishonour clings to him. In the laundry-room of his apartment block he encounters an alluring young woman. When he discovers she is ''between jobs'' he claims failing eyesight and offers her work typing up his manuscript. Anya has no interest in politics but the job provides a distraction, as does the writer''s evident and not unwelcome attraction toward her. Her boyfriend, Alan, an investment consultant who understands the world in harsh neo-liberal economic terms, has reservations about his trophy girlfriend spending time with this 1960s throwback. Taking a lively interest in his affairs, Alan begins to formulate a plan. Diary of a Bad Year is an utterly contemporary work of fiction from one of our greatest writers and deepest thinkers. It addresses the profound unease of countless people in democracies across the world.

Home lent

release date: Jan 01, 2005
Home lent
Quan el fotògraf Paul Rayment perd una cama en un accident de bicicleta, la seva solitària vida canvia de manera irrevocable. Amb tossuderia, rebutjant una pròtesi, Paul torna al seu apartament de solter a Adelaida, incòmode per la seva nova situació de dependència dels altres. Entre successius atacs de desesperació i resignació, Paul comença a repassar els seus seixanta anys de vida, però aviat s’anima en enamorar-se de la Marijana, la infermera croata pràctica i realista que lluita per pujar la seva família en una terra estrangera. Mentre Paul pensa com conquistar el seu cor, el visita la misteriosa escriptora Elizabeth Costello, que el desafia a prendre un paper actiu en la seva pròpia vida.A Home lent, la veu clara i inflexible de J.M. Coetzee ofereix una meditació profunda sobre el que ens fa humans, sobre què vol dir fer-se gran, i reflexiona sobre com hem viscut les nostres vides. Una història profundament commovedora sobre l’amor i la mortalitat que sorprèn el lector a cada pàgina. J. M. Coetzee (Ciutat del Cap, 1940) va estudiar ciències informàtiques i filologia a Sud-àfrica i als Estats Units. La seva primera novel·la va ser Dusklands, seguida d’In the Heart of the Country, que va guanyar el premi literari més important de Sud-àfrica, el CNA. És autor també d’Esperant els bàrbars —guardonada amb el CNA, el Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize i el James Tait Black Memorial Prize—, Vida i època de Michael K (Booker Prize i Prix Étranger Fémina), The Master of Petersburg, Les vides dels animals, Desgràcia (Booker Prize), L’Edat de ferro (Premi Llibreter 2003) i Elizabeth Costello, i és autor dels llibres de memòries Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life i Youth. A J. M. Coetzee li van concedir el Jerusalem Prize l’any 1987, el Lannan de Ficció el 1998 i, recentment, el Premi Nobel de Literatura 2003 en reconeixement a una llarga trajectòria d’una qualitat literària indiscutible.

The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 2003

release date: Dec 07, 2004
The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 2003
A beautiful collector''s edition of J. M. Coetzee''s Nobel Prize lecture In his acceptance speech for the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, J. M. Coetzee delivered an intriguing and enigmatic short story, "He and His Man." The story features Robinson Crusoe, long after his return from the island, reflecting on death and spectacle, writing and allegory, solitude and sociability, as he searches his mind for some true understanding of the "man" who writes of and for him. In the spare and powerful prose for which Coetzee is renowned, The Nobel Lecture in Literature, 2003 is a provocative testament to the uncompromising vision of one of the world''s most profound writers.

Youth

release date: May 27, 2003
Youth
Set against the backdrop of the 1960s - Sharpeville, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, this novel explores a young man''s struggle to find his way in the world with tenderness and a fierce clarity.

Stranger Shores

release date: Jan 01, 2001
Stranger Shores
From the international prize-winning author of "Disgrace" comes a collection of 29 literary essays on the great German Modernists (Rilke, Kafka, Musil), on South African writing, and on such international fiction-writers of our times as Borges, Mahfouz, Mulisch, Skvorecky, Oz, and Rushdie.

Disgrace

release date: Nov 01, 2000
Disgrace
The provocative Booker Prize winning novel from Nobel laureate, J.M. Coetzee "Compulsively readable... A novel that not only works its spell but makes it impossible for us to lay it aside once we''ve finished reading it." —The New Yorker At fifty-two, Professor David Lurie is divorced, filled with desire, but lacking in passion. When an affair with a student leaves him jobless, shunned by friends, and ridiculed by his ex-wife, he retreats to his daughter Lucy''s smallholding. David''s visit becomes an extended stay as he attempts to find meaning in his one remaining relationship. Instead, an incident of unimaginable terror and violence forces father and daughter to confront their strained relationship and the equallity complicated racial complexities of the new South Africa. 2024 marks the 25th Anniversary of the publication of Disgrace

Mr. Cruso, Mrs. Barton und Mr. Foe

release date: Jan 01, 1998
Mr. Cruso, Mrs. Barton und Mr. Foe
Auf den ersten Blick scheint dieser Roman nichts mit Schwarzafrika zu tun zu haben. Susan Barton, von meuternden Matrosen auf einer Insel irgendwo im Atlantik ausgesetzt, trifft auf Robinson und Freitag. Doch anders als in dem berühmten Roman von Defoe gibt es auf der Insel keine Abenteuer zu bestehen, gibt es keine wilden Tiere und keine Kannibalen. Robinson, bei Coetzee ein alter Mann, ist nicht sonderlich erfolgreich bei der Feldbestellung. Er konnte Freitag auch nichts beibringen, denn Freitag war stumm. Schließlich wird das Trio gerettet (Robinson hat gar keine Lust mehr, in die Zivilisation zurückzukehren und stirbt auf der Rückreise nach London). Susan Barton, in Begleitung von Freitag, will jetzt vom Schriftsteller Foe ihre Geschichte aufschreiben lassen, die Geschichte der ''ersten englischen Schiffbrüchigen''. Mr. Foe hat als professioneller Schreiber freilich ganz andere Vorstellungen von der (Aus-)Gestaltung der Geschichte als die Erzählerin. Eigentliche Hauptperson ist Freitag, der wichtigste Zeuge, der steht aber nicht zur Verfügung, er kann nicht sprechen. Ihm hatte man - wie den Schwarzen in Südafrika - die Sprache gestohlen.

Doubling the Point

release date: Jan 01, 1992
Doubling the Point
Nadine Gordimer has written of J.M. Coetzee that his vision goes to the nerve-centre of being. What he finds there is more than most people will ever know about themselves, and he conveys it with a brilliant writer''s mastery of tension and elegance. Doubling the Point takes the reader to the center of that vision. These essays and interviews, documenting Coetzee''s longtime engagement with his own culture, and with modern culture in general, constitute a literary autobiography.

White Writing

release date: Jul 01, 1990

Speaking in Tongues

Speaking in Tongues
Lit Hub''s Most Anticipated Books of 2025 In this provocative dialogue, a Nobel laureate novelist and a leading translator investigate the nature of language and the challenges of translation. "An intelligent, moving, and supremely humane act of criticism that reveals just how difficult and wondrous it can be to inhabit a language that is not your own." -- Merve Emre
26 results found


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