Elizabeth Costello / J.M. Coetzee.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coetzee, J. M., 1940-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women authors--Fiction.

Women authors.

Australians.

Foreign countries.

Australians--Foreign countries--Fiction.

Storytelling--Fiction.

Storytelling.

Authorship--Fiction.

Authorship.

Australia--Fiction.

Australia.

Genre:

Fiction.

Psychological fiction.

Physical Description:

233 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Viking, 2003.

Summary:

In 1982, J. M. Coetzee dazzled the literary world with his novel Waiting for the Barbarians. Five novels and two Booker prizes later, Coetzee is a writer of international stature. Now, in his first work of fiction since the New York Times bestselling Disgrace, he has crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale. Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through an ingenious series of eight formal addresses. From an award-acceptance speech at a New England liberal arts college to a lecture on evil in Amsterdam and a sexually charged reading by the poet Robert Duncan, Coetzee draws the reader inexorably toward its astonishing conclusion. Vividly imagined and masterfully wrought in unerring prose, Elizabeth Costello is, on its surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling that only a writer of Coetzee's caliber could accomplish.

Contents:

Lesson 1 Realism 1

Lesson 2 The Novel in Africa 35

Lesson 3 The Lives of Animals 59

1 The Philosophers and the Animals

Lesson 4 The Lives of Animals 91

2 The Poets and the Animals

Lesson 5 The Humanities in Africa 116

Lesson 6 The Problem of Evil 156

Lesson 7 Eros 183

Lesson 8 At the Gate 193

Postscript: Letter of Elizabeth, Lady Chandos 227.

ISBN:

0670031305

OCLC:

52853016