AustLit

'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 loves to kick a soccer ball with his friends in Estrella. His father, Simón, and Bolívar the dog usually watch. His mother, Inés, works in a fashion boutique.

'David still asks lots of questions. In dancing class, he dances as he chooses. He refuses to do sums and the only book he will read is Don Quixote.

'One day, Julio Fabricante, the director of a nearby orphanage, invites David and his friends to form a proper soccer team. David decides to leave Simón and Inés and live with Julio. Before long he succumbs to a mysterious illness. Will he have time to deliver his ‘message’?

'In The Death of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee continues to explore the meaning of a world brimming with questions.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

In Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons, the eponymous protagonist is a retired author of international literary acclaim, who now spends her time giving guest lectures and interviews at scholarly events around the world. Old age has loosened, rather than reified, her ethical and literary convictions, and swelled her emotional reserves; rather than provide the staid academic wisdom expected of her, Costello offers provocative, unsettling opinions on issues such as animal rights, literary censorship, and the nature of belief - opinions she may or may not believe in herself. Profoundly aware of itself, Coetzee's novel is about human morality and mortality, but above all, about literature itself and the ethical responsibilities of writers and readers.

After years teaching Romantic poetry at the Technical University of Cape Town, David Lurie, middle-aged and twice divorced, has an impulsive affair with a student. The affair sours; he is denounced and summoned before a committee of inquiry. Willing to admit his guilt, but refusing to yield to pressure to repent publicly, he resigns and retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is shifting. He and Lucy become victims of a savage and disturbing attack which brings into relief all the faultlines in their relationship.' (Publisher's blurb)