J. M. Coetzee

"Exacting yet unpredictable, pithy yet complex, Coetzee's The Pole tells the story of Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a vigorous, extravagantly white-haired pianist and interpreter of Chopin who becomes infatuated with Beatriz, a stylish patron of the arts, after she helps organize his concert in Barcelona. Although Beatriz, a married woman, is initially unimpressed by Wittold and his "gleaming dentures," she soon finds herself pursued and ineluctably swept...

A modern classic by Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee. His latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. 
For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however,...

The Magistrate of an isolated frontier settlement on the border of an unnamed empire looks forward to an easy retirement until the arrival of Colonel Joll, whose task it is to report on the activities of the "barbarians" and the security situation on the border. Joll conducts a series of ruthless interrogations, which leads the Magistrate to question his loyalty to the empire.

In this autobiographical novel, a young English biographer is researching a book about the late South African writer John Coetzee, focusing on Coetzee in his thirties, at a time when he was living in a rundown cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his widowed father--a time, the biographer is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer.

At the center of the book is Senor C, an aging author who has been asked to write his thoughts on the state of the world by his German publisher. These thoughts, called "Strong Opinions," address a wide range of subjects and include a scathing indictment of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Tony Blair, as well as a witheringly honest examination of everything from Machiavelli and the current state of the university to music, literature, and intelligent...

Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through a 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, the author draws the reader toward its astonishing conclusion. The novel is, on its surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer....

"The Good Story" is an exchange between a writer with a long-standing interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with a training in literary studies. Arabella Kurtz and J.M. Coetzee consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both their approaches is a concern with stories. Working alone, the writer is in sole charge of the story he or she tells. The therapist, on the other hand, collaborates...

A new collection of essays and literary criticism from the Nobel Prize winner. In addition to being one of the most acclaimed and accomplished fiction writers in the world, Coetzee is also a literary critic of the highest caliber. As Derek Attridge observes in his introduction, reading Coetzee's nonfiction offers one the opportunity to see "how an author at the forefront of his profession engages with his peers, not as a critic from the outside, but...

Mrs. Cullen, the narrator in this novel, is an elderly white woman dying of cancer in a country afflicted with its own mortal sickness.