J. M. Coetzee

The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing. J. M. Coetzee’s Booker Prize-winning novel Disgrace, set in post-apartheid South Africa, takes us into the disquieting mind of twice-divorced university teacher David Lurie as he loses his job and his honour after engaging...

As Text continues the re-release of J. M. Coetzee's major works, this second instalment of four titles—with introductions from top emerging and established writers—will win over a new generation of Coetzee readers. In a world of chance, is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger's embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of...

As Text continues the re-release of J. M. Coetzee's major works, this second instalment of four titles—with introductions from top emerging and established writers—will win over a new generation of Coetzee readers. I am falling, I think, I am falling—welcome sweet sleep. Then at the very edge of oblivion something looms up and pulls me back, something whose name can...

Continuing Text's re-release of J. M. Coetzee's revered works with stylish new covers, Boyhood is a modern classic by the great Nobel Prize winner, accompanied by an introduction from acclaimed author Liam Pieper. It is up to him to somehow get beyond childhood, beyond family and school, to a new life where he will not need to pretend any more....

As Text continues the re-release of J. M. Coetzee's revered works, this second instalment of four titles—with introductions from top emerging and established writers—will win over a new generation of Coetzee readers. You must listen. I speak with the voice of things to come. I speak in troubled times and tell you how to be as children again. J. M....

Continuing Text's re-release of J.M. Coetzee's revered works with stylish new covers, Elizabeth Costello is a modern classic by the great Nobel Prize winner, accompanied by an introduction from one of Australia's foremost writing critics and Coetzee experts. Introduction by Melinda Harvey Belief may be no more, in the end, than a source of energy, like a battery which one...

Today my father brought home his new bride. Magda lives on an isolated farm in South Africa with her callous father and their staff, who treat her with disdain. Her psychological state, already precarious, disintegrates when her father takes a black mistress, and a tenuous feudal peace is shattered. In prose rich and vivid, Coetzee re-enacts the colonial experience in...

Continuing Text's re-release of J. M. Coetzee's revered works with stylish new covers, Slow Man is a modern classic by the great Nobel Prize winner, accompanied by an introduction from editor and critic Andrew Fuhrmann. If none is left who will pronounce judgment on such a life, if the Great Judge of All has given up judging and withdrawn to...

And he was just a boy, this Mr Coetzee. I was a woman and he was a boy. He was a boy as a priest is always a boy until suddenly one day he is an old man. After some time in America, the young unpublished writer John Coetzee returns to suburban Cape Town to live with his ailing father....

The child is silent. For a while he too is silent. Then he speaks. "Please believe me — please take it on faith — this is not a simple matter. The boy is without mother. What that means I cannot explain to you because I cannot explain it to myself. Yet I promise you, if you will simply say Yes,...

Four modern classics by the great South African writer, J. M. Coetzee, re-released with stylish new covers and accompanied by introductions from some of Australia's brightest writing talents. History is coming to an end; the old account-books will soon be thrown into the fire; in this dead time between old and new, all things are permitted. He does not believe...

Continuing Text's re-release of J. M. Coetzee's revered works with stylish new covers, Youth is a modern classic by the great Nobel Prize winner accompanied by an introduction from bestselling author Michael McGirr. He has escaped South Africa. Everything is going well, he has attained his first goal, he ought to be happy. In fact, as the weeks pass, he...

Inner Workings is the second of three collections of literary criticism by J. M. Coetzee to be republished by Text. It includes essays on Musil and Beckett, Saul Bellow, and Nadine Gordimer. These are concise, accessible introductions to some of the world’s greatest writers, penned by a contemporary master.

Stranger Shores is the first of three collections of literary criticism by J. M. Coetzee to be republished by Text. It includes essays on Dostoevsky and Kafka, A. S. Byatt and Doris Lessing. These are concise, accessible introductions to some of the world’s greatest writers, by a contemporary master.

The extraordinary follow-up novel to The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus by two-time Booker Prize winner and Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, now available in a smaller and competitively priced format. After The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee completes his trilogy with a new masterwork, The Death of Jesus. David has...

The Pole and Other Stories by Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee reaffirms his place as one of the English language's most acclaimed authors with this fascinating examination of life, death, and animals. These six stories by Nobel Prize-winner J. M. Coetzee show us, once more, a writer confronting moral and emotional quandaries, often with wry humour. In the lead story,...

"She pouts. I was expecting more of a story, she says. It is difficult to get into the swing when the subject keeps changing." An ageing writer fills his journal: he has opinions about everything. He is challenged by Anya, the smart, irreverent young woman he hires to type his notes. Anya's boyfriend scorns the writer and schemes against him....

The Schooldays of Jesus is the startling sequel to J. M. Coetzee's widely praised The Childhood of Jesus. David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new country. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him....

As he gets older, he finds himself growing more and more crabby about language, about slack usage and falling standards. Falling in love, for instance. "We fell in love with the house," friends of his say. How can you fall in love with a house when the house cannot love you back, he wants to reply? Once you start falling...

Four modern classics by the great South African writer, J. M. Coetzee, re-released with stylish new covers and accompanied by introductions from some of Australia's brightest writing talents. There was a cord of tenderness that stretched from him to the patch of earth beside that dam and must be cut. It seemed to him that one could cut a cord...

The final volume of Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee's essays on celebrated writers. Late Essays is the last of three collections of literary criticism by J. M. Coetzee to be republished by Text. It includes essays on Flaubert and Goethe, Patrick White and Gerald Murnane. These are concise, accessible introductions to some of the world's greatest writers, by a...

Although Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee had been reading each other's books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, 'God willing, strike sparks off each other'. Here and Now is the result of that proposal: an...

Speaking in Tongues is a book about how language shapes us, written by Nobel and Booker-prizewinning author J. M. Coetzee and his Spanish translator, Mariana Dimópulos. This is a book about languages, what languages can and what they cannot do. In this dialogue between a Nobel Laureate and a leading translator, provocative ideas emerge about the evolution of language and...

How do you eradicate contempt, especially when that contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations in the structure of the eyelid? Shall I tell you what I sometimes wish? I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them. After twenty years of...