Life and Times of Michael K - Hardcover

J. M. Coetzee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670427896 ISBN 13: 9780670427895

Publisher: Viking Press, 1984

Synopsis

Michael K, a young South African, becomes unwillingly and unwittingly involved in a war in South Africa after he loses his gardening job in Capetown and embarks on an odyssey to return his dying mother to her homeland

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

In South Africa, whose civil administration is colapsing under the pressure of years of civil strife, an obscure young gardener named Michael K decides to take his mother on a long march away from the guns towards a new life in the abandoned countryside. Everywhere he goes however, the war follows him. Tracked down and locked up as a collaborator with the rural guerrillas, he embarks on a fast that angers, baffles, and finally awes his captors. The story of Michael K is the story of a man caught up in a war beyond his understanding, but determined to live his life, however minimally, on his own terms. J.M. Coetzee has produced a masterpiece which has the astonishing power to make the wilderness boom.

From the Back Cover:

In a south Africa turned by war, Michael K. sets out to take his ailing mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. This life affirming novel goes to the center of human experience-the need for an interior, spiritual life; for some connections to the world in which we live; and for purity of vision.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Press
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0670427896
• ISBN 13: 9780670427895
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184