Coetzee is one of only two authors to have won the Booker Prize twice - for Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999)Disgrace has sold over 450,000 copies in Secker and Vintage editionsStunning new look for his backlist
J.M. Coetzee’s work includes
Waiting for the Barbarians,
Life & Times of Michael K,
Boyhood,
Youth,
Disgrace,
Summertime,
The Childhood of Jesus and, most recently,
The Schooldays of Jesus. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.
Elizabeth Costello is an Australian writer of international renown. Famous principally for an early novel that established her reputation, she has reached the stage where her remaining function is to be venerated and applauded.
Her life has become a series of engagements in sterile conference rooms throughout the world - a private consciousness obliged to reveal itself to a curious public: the presentation of a major award at an American college where she is required to deliver a lecture; a sojourn as the writer in residence on a cruise liner; a visit to her sister, a missionary in Africa, who is receiving an honorary degree, an occasion which both recognise as the final opportunity for effecting some form of reconciliation; and a disquieting appearance at a writers' conference in Amsterdam where she finds the subject of her talk unexpectedly amongst the audience.
She has made her life's work the study of other people yet now it is she who is the object of scrutiny. But, for her, what matters is the continuing search for a means of articulating her vision and the verdict of future generations.
One of Coetzee's best...simply burns with creative passionAn important book... ExtraordinaryProbably the best book on the [Booker] longlist, the one that will last... Every word counts. Every sentence livesThe best novel I've read this year, a book so bold and so clever that one wants to call it something other than a novel, to take it out of that commonplace genreA readable and engaging book. Demanding, playful, provocative...hugely enlightening and rewarding
