J M Coetzee – författare

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. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 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

Selected and introduced by J. M. Coetzee and Alissa Valles, an essential gathering of poetry from one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent literary voicesbe courageous when reason fails you be courageousin the final reckoning it is the only thing that countsBorn in Poland, Zbigniew Herbert was one of the great poets of the twentieth century, moved throughout his work by a powerful sense of humanity in the darkest of times. This new selection brings together poems from across the whole of his writing life, from his first volume Chord of Light in 1956, to works published posthumously in 2024. Direct, lucid, sometimes impish in his ironic humour, and deeply informed not only by the history of his own time, but by the Classical world, here is a poet of huge imaginative range and profundity, who desires always to ‘touch the essence’: to get to the heart of life."He offers what we all need in an age of darkening anxiety and mistrust: a voice of lucid, truly humane observation and integrity. Ethical, often ironical, full of self-doubt; quick, original and vivid." Ruth Padel

Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee tells the remarkable story of a nation gripped in brutal apartheid in Age of Iron. In Cape Town, South Africa, an elderly classics professor writes a letter to her distant daughter, recounting the strange and disturbing events of her dying days. She has been opposed to the lies and the brutality of apartheid all her life, but now she finds herself coming face to face with its true horrors: the hounding by the police of her servant's son, the burning of a nearby black township, the murder by security forces of a teenage activist who seeks refuge in her house. Through it all, her only companion, the only person to whom she can confess her mounting anger and despair, is a homeless man who one day appears on her doorstep.In Age of Iron, J. M. Coetzee brings his searing insight and masterful control of language to bear on one of the darkest episodes of our times.'Quite simply a magnificent and unforgettable work' Daily Telegraph'A superbly realized novel whose truth cuts to the bone' The New York Times'A remarkable work by a brilliant writer' Wall Street Journal

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 TimesSouth 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.

The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world. Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother's lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother's vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority. At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but--dare he admit it?--strangely on target. In this landmark book, Nobel Prize-winning writer J. M.Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello's own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction--Coetzee brings all these elements into play. As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee's text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation.Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation.

This text presents an analysis of censorship from the perspective of a writer who has lived and worked under its shadow. The essays collected here attempt to understand the passion that plays itself out in acts of silencing and censoring. Subscribing neither to the myth of the writer as a moral giant nor to that of the writer as persecuted innocent, Coetzee argues that a destructive dynamic of belligerence and escalation tends to overtake the rivals in any field ruled by censorship. Ranging from Osip Mandelstam being commanded to compose an ode in praise of Stalin to Breyten Breytenbach writing poems under and for the eyes of his prison guards, the book focuses on the ways authors have historically responded to censorship. It also analyzes the arguments of Catharine MacKinnon for the suppression of pornography and traces the operations of the old South African censorship system. Finally, Coetzee delves into the early history of apartheid and criticizes the blankness of contemporary political science in its efforts to address the deeper motives behind apartheid. Winner of the Booker Prize for "The Life and Times of Michael K.", Coetzee has also written seven novels, including "The Master of Petersburg", and two books of criticism.

This is an analysis of censorship from the perspective of one who has lived and worked under its shadow. The essays collected here attempt to understand the passion that plays itself out in acts of silencing and censoring. Coetzee argues that a destructive dynamic of belligerence and escalation tends to overtake the rivals in any field ruled by censorship. From Osip Mandelstam commanded to compose an ode in praise of Stalin, to Breyten Breytenbach writing poems under and for the eyes of his prison guards, to Aleksander Solzhenitsyn engaging in a trial of wits with the organs of the Soviet state, the book focuses on the ways authors have historically responded to censorship. It also analyzes the arguments of Catharine MacKinnon for the suppression of pornography and traces the operations of the old South African censorship system.

Selected and introduced by J. M. Coetzee and Alissa Valles, an essential gathering of poetry from one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent literary voicesbe courageous when reason fails you be courageousin the final reckoning it is the only thing that countsBorn in Poland, Zbigniew Herbert was one of the great poets of the twentieth century, moved throughout his work by a powerful sense of humanity in the darkest of times. This new selection brings together poems from across the whole of his writing life, from his first volume Chord of Light in 1956, to works published posthumously in 2024. Direct, lucid, sometimes impish in his ironic humour, and deeply informed not only by the history of his own time, but by the Classical world, here is a poet of huge imaginative range and profundity, who desires always to ‘touch the essence’: to get to the heart of life."He offers what we all need in an age of darkening anxiety and mistrust: a voice of lucid, truly humane observation and integrity. Ethical, often ironical, full of self-doubt; quick, original and vivid." Ruth Padel

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. Published as a Penguin Essential for the first time. 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

Nobel Laureate and two-time Booker prize-winning author of Disgrace and The Life and Times of Michael K, J. M. Coetzee tells the remarkable story of a nation gripped in brutal apartheid in his Sunday Express Book of the Year award-winner Age of Iron. In Cape Town, South Africa, an elderly classics professor writes a letter to her distant daughter, recounting the strange and disturbing events of her dying days. She has been opposed to the lies and the brutality of apartheid all her life, but now she finds herself coming face to face with its true horrors: the hounding by the police of her servant's son, the burning of a nearby black township, the murder by security forces of a teenage activist who seeks refuge in her house. Through it all, her only companion, the only person to whom she can confess her mounting anger and despair, is a homeless man who one day appears on her doorstep.In Age of Iron, J. M. Coetzee brings his searing insight and masterful control of language to bear on one of the darkest episodes of our times.'Quite simply a magnificent and unforgettable work' Daily Telegraph'A superbly realized novel whose truth cuts to the bone' The New York Times'A remarkable work by a brilliant writer' Wall Street JournalSouth 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, Foe, an exquisite reinvention of the story of Robinson Crusoe is also available in Penguin paperback.

Though the Netherlands has been the site of vigorous literary activity since at least the Beweging van Vijftig (Movement of the Fifties) poets, the status of Dutch as a "minor" language spoken by only twenty-two million people has kept its rich poetry more or less a secret. This volume--featuring J. M. Coetzee's finely wrought English translations side-by-side with the originals--brings the work of six of the most important modern and contemporary Dutch poets to light. Ranging in style from the rhetorical to the intensely lyrical, the work here includes examples of myth-influenced modernist verse, nature poetry, experimental poetry, poems conscious of themselves within a pan-European avant-garde, and Cees Nooteboom's uncompromising reflections on the powers and limitations of art. In addition to Nooteboom, the poets represented are Gerrit Achterberg, Hugo Claus, Sybren Polet, Hans Faverey, and Rutger Kopland--a who's who of contemporary Dutch poetry. In Youth, Coetzee's main character claims that "of all nations the Dutch are the dullest, the most antipoetic." With these marvelous translations, the author proves his protagonist wrong.

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZELate Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. From the Nobel Prize-winning author J. M. Coetzee, the haunting sequel to The Childhood of Jesus, continuing the journey of Davíd, Simón, and Inés “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, with the guidance of the three sisters who own the farm where Simón and Inés work, 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 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.

“[A] civilized discourse between two cultivated and sophisticated men. . . . It’s a pleasure to be in their company.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington PostJ.M. Coetzee''s latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. 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 other’s friendship on every page.