Scenes from Provincial Life - by J M Coetzee (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Many, this reviewer among them, would consider [Coetzee] the greatest living novelist in English." -- The New York Times Book Review

"It's a mark of Mr. Coetzee's power as a storyteller that he makes a compelling, indeed, racing, narrative out of these hidden wheels within wheels." -- The New York Times

"South Africa's most brilliant novelist . . . challenges us to doubt our preconceived notions not only of love but of truth itself." -- The Seattle times

"Coetzee portrays his younger self as scrawny and pretentious, but even if this insistent humility is just another form of self-aggrandizement, the result is enthralling" -- Entertainment Weekly (an A rating)

"A delight to read: It will make you angry, amused, scornful and sympathetic by turns." -- San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940, John Michael Coetzee studied first at Cape Town and later at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in literature. In 1972 he returned to South Africa and joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town. His works of fiction include Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won South Africa's highest literary honor, the Central News Agency Literary Award, and the Life and Times of Michael K., for which Coetzee was awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. He has also published a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life, and several essays collections. He has won many other literary prizes including the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize. In 1999 he again won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for Disgrace, becoming the first author to win the award twice in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.