Coetzee

Representing a wide range of critical and theoretical perspectives, this volume examines J.M. Coetzee's novels from Dusklands to Diary of a Bad Year.

A Book of Friends is a collection of essays, stories, poems and artworks compiled in honour of J. M. Coetzee on his eightieth birthday. It includes contributions from some of Coetzee's friends and contemporaries, and is edited by Dorothy Driver, his partner over the past four decades.

This book is about the metanarrative and metafictional elements of J. M. Coetzee’s novels. It draws together authorship, readership, ethics, and formal analysis into one overarching argument about how narratives work the boundary between art and life. On the basis of Coetzee’s writing, it reconsiders the concept of metalepsis, challenges common understandings of self-reflexive discourse, and invites us to rethink our practice as critics and readers.