"Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee is one of the most widely taught contemporary writers, but also one of the most elusive. Many critics who have addressed his work have devoted themselves to rendering it more accessible and acceptable, often playing down the features that discomfort and perplex his readers. Yet it is just these features, Derek Attridge argues, that give Coetzee's work its haunting power and offer its greatest rewards. Attridge...

A new collection of essays and literary criticism from the Nobel Prize winner. In addition to being one of the most acclaimed and accomplished fiction writers in the world, Coetzee is also a literary critic of the highest caliber. As Derek Attridge observes in his introduction, reading Coetzee's nonfiction offers one the opportunity to see "how an author at the forefront of his profession engages with his peers, not as a critic from the outside, but...