3 replies to this topic

[Pamela Moberg]

The winner of the Nobel Prize for literature was announced today. It goes to the South African author JM Coetzee.
To date, I have only read his "Disgrace". And I recommend it.
Sometimes this prize is awarded to some obscure poet you have never heard of and will never hear of again, but I feel this was a very good choice.
Anybody read anything by Coetzee?

[carbro]

Not yet, but after having heard appreciations of him on NPR's All Things Considered and PBS' Newshour, he's on my Must Read List.   The authors who were interviewed about him indicated that he was an intensely inward looking author -- just my style.  And their appreciation of Coetzee's work was remarkably unrestrained.  :jump:  :bouncing:    :bouncing:  :jump:  Unusual.

[Paul Parish]

o he's tremendous -- I can't remember the name of hte book I read, but it was about the incredible moral complexities created  by apartheid , up to iand including people spying on each other, denouncng each other, imprisonment, torture, all to maintain a politico-social surface of calm and order -- like Darkness at Noon. crossed with Dostoyevsky and Faulkner -- the way the society worked is pprofoundly understood, and the way the individual psyche worked is just as deep....... tremendous book ,and though it was very violent and frightening, it wasn't depressing....

[Pamela Moberg]

Carbro, I loved all your clapping and bouncing smilies! Yes, I feel the same way.
I took out "Disgrace" again and flipped though it re-reading passages, Yeah, the guy is great, his compassion!
I have always wanted to be a truly compassionate being (not sentimental, may God preserve me), but here I understand I have a lot to learn although I think I am on the right path.  
For once, the Swedish Academy has not goofed - sad to say, they have in the past...