New essays providing critical views of Coetzee's major works for the scholar and the general reader. J. M. Coetzee is perhaps the most critically acclaimed bestselling author of imaginative fiction writing in English today. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and is the first writer to have been awarded two BookerPrizes. The present volume makes critical views of this important writer accessible to the general reader as well as the scholar, discussing Coetzee's main works in chronological order and introducing the dominant themes in the academic discussion of his oeuvre. The volume highlights Coetzee's exceptionally nuanced approach to writing as both an exacting craft and a challenging moral-ethical undertaking. It discusses Coetzee's complex relation to apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, the land of his birth, and evaluates his complicated responses to the literary canon. Coetzee emerges as both a modernist and a highly self-aware postmodernist - a champion of the truths of aliterary enterprise conducted unrelentingly in the mode of self-confession. Contributors: Chris Ackerley, Derek Attridge, Carrol Clarkson, Simone Drichel, Johan Geertsema, David James, Michelle Kelly, Sue Kossew, MikeMarais, James Meffan, Tim Mehigan, Chris Prentice, Engelhard Weigl, Kim L. Worthington. Tim Mehigan is Professor of Languages in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand and Honorary Professor in the Department of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Introduction - Tim Mehigan Scenes from Provincial Life (1997-2009) - Sue Kossew Style: Coetzee and Beckett - Chris Ackerley Dusklands (1974) - David James In the Heart of the Country (1977) - Derek Attrige Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) - Mike Marais Life & Times of Michael K (1983) - Engelhard Weigl Foe (1986) - Chris Prentice Age of Iron (1990) - Kim L. Worthington The Master of Petersburg (1994) - Michelle Kelly Disgrace (1999) - Simone Drichel Elizabeth Costello (2003) - James Meffan Slow Man (2005) - Tim Mehigan Diary of a Bad Year (2007) - Johan Geertsema Coetzee's Criticism - Carrol Clarkson Works Cited Notes on the Contributors Index