John Maxwell Coetzee is justly celebrated as one of the greatest living novelists, a recipient of nearly every major literary award – some of them more than once – but he is also, perhaps not surprisingly, one of our greatest […]

The Schooldays of Jesus was, for me, an impulse buy, purchased purely on the strength of my esteem for J.M. Coetzee, whom I regard as one of the greatest living fiction writers, but my enthusiasm – at least in this […]

With the passing of William H. Gass late last year, there is a vacancy in my heart for the title of best living English writer, but with Waiting For The Barbarians, first published nearly 40 years ago, South Africa’s J.M. […]

Midway through J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, I had to pause to check its date of publication; it seemed so fresh, so relevant to contemporary issues, and yet it was published in 1999, nearly two decades ago. Consider the book’s protagonist, David Lurie, […]