Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life - Softcover

Coetzee, J. M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014026566X ISBN 13: 9780140265668

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1998

Synopsis

"Fiercely revealing, bluntly unsentimental. . .a telling portrait of the artist as a young man that illuminates the hidden source of his art." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. 

Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, tormented by guilt and fear. With a father he despised, and a mother he both adored and resented, he led a double life—the brilliant and well-behaved student at school, the princely despot at home, always terrified of losing his mother's love. His first encounters with literature, the awakenings of sexual desire, and a growing awareness of apartheid left him with baffling questions; and only in his love of the high veld ("farms are places of freedom, of life") could he find a sense of belonging. Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for, but never could have expected.

About this title

Review:

Until writing this book, the author of Waiting for the Barbarians and other acclaimed novels has remained determinedly private about the personal experiences that sparked his writing. In Boyhood, describing his youth in the third person, J. M. Coetzee limns the halting struggle toward maturity of a sensitive, bookish boy contemptuous of his weak father who yearns--and fears--to loosen a powerful attachment to his mother. He evokes the narrowness and cruelty of South African society in the years following World War II with the same austere yet passionate prose that distinguishes his fiction.

From the Inside Flap:

The first volume of memoirs from the two-time winner of the Booker Prize.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 014026566X
• ISBN 13: 9780140265668
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 166