BOOKS FROM SOUTH AFRICABoyhood
Description:
In Boyhood, J. M. Coetzee revisits the South Africa of half a century ago, to write about his childhood and interior life. Boyhood's young narrator grew up in a small country town. With a father he imitated but could not respect, and a mother he both adored and resented, he picked his way through a world that refused to explain its rules, but whose rules he knew he must obey. Steering between these contradictions, Boyhood evokes the tensions, delights and terrors of childhood with startling, haunting immediacy. Coetzee examines his young self with the dispassionate curiosity of an explorer rediscovering his own early footprints, and the account of his progress is bright, hard and simply compelling.
Reviews:
(2 years ago) |
08 Mar, 2023
In Boyhood, award-winning author J.M. Coetzee revisits the South Africa of half a century ago to write about his childhood and interior life.
Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, tormented by guilt and fear. With a father he despised, and a mother he both adored and resented, he led a double life – the brilliant and well-behaved student at school, the princely despot at home, always terrified of losing his mother's love.
His first encounters with literature, the awakenings of sexual desire, and a growing awareness of apartheid left him with baffling questions, and only in his love of the high veld ('farms are places of freedom, of life') could he find a sense of belonging.
Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for, but never could have expected.
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