J. M. Coetzee

'The Childhood of Jesus' is a profound, beautiful and continually surprising novel from J.M. Coetzee, author of 'Waiting for the Barbarians' and 'Summertime'.

The Childhood of Jesus

David and Simón arrive in a strange land without knowledge of the language or customs in search of David's mother in this allegorical tale from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Barbarians.

Melody Izard

A very different Coetzee. More of an allegory - but you just don't feel that you are quite getting the message. There seems to be good and evil - but good isn't quite the type of good that we have been led to believe in and evil isn't all the way into the realm of the evil that we fear. Jesus doesn't show up once in his biblical form - but there are certainly things described that can be bible borrowings - if I can be trusted to remember the holy book.

Reminds me of the Unconsoled or All the Names.

Enjoyed discussing it during book group.

Beka Demuradze

Maurice FitzGerald

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

Lisa

Jesse Morley

Jamie de Rooij

Amanda S

Kathy Rodger 

Hannah K

This is an extraordinary new fable from one of the world's greatest living novelists, two-time Booker Prize winner and Nobel Laureate. David is a small boy who comes by boat across the ocean to a new country. He has been separated from his parents, and has lost the piece of paper that would have explained everything. On the boat a stranger named Simon takes it upon himself to look after the boy. On arrival they are assigned new names, new birthdates. They know little Spanish, the language of their new country, and nothing about its customs. They have also suffered a kind of forgetting of old attachments and feelings. They are people without a past. Simon's goal is to find the boy's mother. He feels sure he will know her when he sees her. And David? He wants to find his mother too but he also wants to understand where he is and how he fits in. He is a boy who is always asking questions. The Childhood of Jesus is not like any other novel you have read. This beautiful and surprising fable is about childhood, about destiny, about being an outsider. It is a novel about the riddle of experience itself. J.M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He lives in Adelaide. 'Coetzee is a master we scarcely deserve.' Age 'Coetzee gradually, with great intelligence and skill, brings to extraordinary - possibly divine - life an ostensibly simple story.' Weekend Australian 'A theological and philosophical fable of considerable brilliance, power and wit. Coetzee hasn't done anything as fine and beautifully executed as this since Disgrace.' Canberra Times and Age '[A] quiet, haunting novel...Coetzee's calm, emblematic prose lifts the plot into something redolent with metaphor and mystery...Any statement can become a symbol; every event is suffused with potential revelation; something magical is always present and just out of reach...It's a memorable accomplishment, turning the everyday into the almost everlasting.' Weekend Herald (NZ) 'Double Booker Prize-winner Coetzee's fable has a dream-like, Kafkaesque quality. Are we in some kind of heaven, purgatory or simply another staging post of existence? Clear answers are elusive, but this is a riveting, thought-provoking read and surely Coetzee's best novel since Disgrace more than a decade ago.' Daily Mail 'Written with all of Coetzee's penetrating rigour, it will be an early contender for an unprecedented third Booker prize.' Observer 'The Childhood of Jesus represents a return to the allegorical mode that made him famous...a Kafkaesque version of the nativity story...The Childhood of Jesus does ample justice to his giant reputation: it's richly enigmatic, with regular flashes of Coetzee's piercing intelligence.' Guardian 'The sense of calm, furthered by Coetzee's spare prose, is very unsettling...These are not the horrors of Waiting for the Barbarians, this is the horror of banality.' Independent on Sunday

Emir Andrés Ibañez

After crossing oceans, a man and a boy arrive in a new land. Here they are each assigned a name and an age, and held in a camp in the desert while they learn Spanish, the language of their new country. As SimÃ3n and David they make their way to the relocation centre in the city of Novilla, where officialdom treats them politely but not necessarily helpfully. SimÃ3n finds a job in a grain wharf. The work is unfamiliar and backbreaking, but he soon warms to his stevedore comrades, who during breaks conduct philosophical dialogues on the dignity of labour, and generally take him to their hearts. Now he must set about his task of locating the boyâe(tm)s mother. Though like everyone else who arrives in this new country he seems to be washed clean of all traces of memory, he is convinced he will know her when he sees her. And indeed, while walking with the boy in the countryside SimÃ3n catches sight of a woman he is certain is the mother, and persuades her to assume the role. David's new mother comes to realise that he is an exceptional child, a bright, dreamy boy with highly unusual ideas about the world. But the school authorities detect a rebellious streak in him and insist he be sent to a special school far away. His mother refuses to yield him up, and it is SimÃ3n who must drive the car as the trio flees across the mountains. THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS is a profound, beautiful and continually surprising novel from a very great writer.

The Childhood of Jesus

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