A moving, insightful biography of the Nobel Laureate and a study of J. M. Coetzees work, illuminating the creation of his exceptional novels J. M. Coetzee is one of the worlds most intriguing authors. Compelling, razor-sharp, erudite the adjectives pile up but the heart of the fiction remains elusive. Now, in J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing, David Attwell explores the extraordinary creative processes behind Coetzees novels from Dusklands to The Childhood of Jesus. Using Coetzees manuscripts, notebooks and research papers—recently deposited at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin—Attwell produces a fascinating story. He shows convincingly that Coetzees work is strongly autobiographical, the memoirs being continuous with the fictions, and that his writing proceeds with never-ending self-reflection.
