New essays providing critical views of Coetzee's major works for the scholar and the general reader. J. M. Coetzee is perhaps the most critically acclaimed bestselling author of imaginative fiction writing in English today. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and is the first writer to have been awarded two BookerPrizes. The present volume makes critical views of this important writer accessible to the general reader as well as the scholar, discussing Coetzee's main works in chronological order and introducing the dominant themes in the academic discussion of his oeuvre. The volume highlights Coetzee's exceptionally nuanced approach to writing as both an exacting craft and a challenging moral-ethical undertaking. It discusses Coetzee's complex relation to apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, the land of his birth, and evaluates his complicated responses to the literary canon. Coetzee emerges as both a modernist and a highly self-aware postmodernist - a champion of the truths of aliterary enterprise conducted unrelentingly in the mode of self-confession. Contributors: Chris Ackerley, Derek Attridge, Carrol Clarkson, Simone Drichel, Johan Geertsema, David James, Michelle Kelly, Sue Kossew, MikeMarais, James Meffan, Tim Mehigan, Chris Prentice, Engelhard Weigl, Kim L. Worthington. Tim Mehigan is Professor of Languages in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand and Honorary Professor in the Department of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia.

New essays examining the intellectual allegiances of Coetzee, arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of fiction in English today and a deeply intellectual and philosophical writer. Arguably the most decorated and critically acclaimed writer of today, J. M. Coetzee is a deeply intellectual writer. Yet while just about everyone who comes to Coetzee's writing is aware that the visible superstructure of his works is moved from below by a vast substructure of ideas, we are still far from grasping Coetzee's intellectual allegiances as a whole. This book sets out to examine these allegiances in ways not attempted before, by bringing leadingfigures in the philosophy of literary fiction and ethics together with leading Coetzee scholars. The book is organized into three parts: the first part evaluates Coetzee with respect to notions of truth and justification. At issue is how the reader is to understand the ground on which Coetzee builds his ethical commitments. The second part considers the problem of language, in which ethics is rooted and on which it depends. The chapters of the third partposition Coetzee's writing with respect to notions of social and moral solidarity, where, in regard to literature as such or experience as such, philosophy and literature together exercise an unrivaled right to be heard. Contributors: Elisa Aaltola, Derek Attridge, David Attwell, Maria Boletsi, Carrol Clarkson, Simon During, Patrick Hayes, Alexander Honold, Anton Leist, Tim Mehigan, Christian Moser, Robert B. Pippin, Robert Stockhammer, Markus Winkler, Martin Woessner. Tim Mehigan is Deputy Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Christian Moser is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bonn.