Description
Book SynopsisJ. M. Coetzee is, without question, one of the world''s greatest novelists. This volume gathers together for the first time in book form twenty-nine pieces on books, writing, photography and the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. Stranger Shores opens with ''What is a Classic?'' in which Coetzee explores the answer to his own question - ''What does it mean in living terms to say that the classic is what survives?'' - by way of TS Eliot, JS Bach and Zbigniew Herbert.
His subjects range from eighteenth and nineteenth century writers Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Ivan Turgenev, to the great German modernists Rilke, Kafka, and Musil, to the giants of late twentieth century literature, among them Harry Mulisch, Joseph Brodsky, Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie, Amos Oz, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing.
Trade ReviewThe scale of Coetzee's reading makes most British criticism seem dully provincial -- Andrew Marr * Daily Telegraph *
To read him on Kafka and on the deficiencies of the English translation of the work is to be put in touch with criticism at its most attentive and creative * Irish Indepedent *
This is exemplary writing - balanced, clear, direct and profound * Literary Review *
'What is a Classic?'...is a marvellous essay, and the book is worth buying for it alone. Coetzee the critic is every bit as good as Coetzee the novelist * Irish Times *
