[home] [news] [this year's award] [publishers] [libraries] [award archive] [faqs] [dublin city public libraries] [IMPAC] [contact us]
|
The
2007 Award |
|
Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
|
Nominated by:
Publisher
of Nominated Edition
|
| the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors |
|
ABOUT
THE BOOK |
| When
photographer Paul Rayment loses his leg in a bicycle accident, his solitary life
is irrevocably changed whether he likes it or not. Stubbornly refusing a prosthesis,
Paul returns to his bachelor's apartment in Adelaide, Australia, uncomfortable
with his new dependency on others. He is given to bouts of hopelessness and resignation
as he looks back on his sixty years of life, but his spirits are lifted when he
finds himself falling in love with Marijana, his practical, down-to-earth Croatian
nurse who is struggling to raise her family in a foreign land. As Paul contemplates
how to win her heart, he is visited by the mysterious writer Elizabeth Costello,
who challenges Paul to take an active role in his own life. In this new book, Coetzee offers a profound meditation on what makes us human, on what it means to grow older and reflect on how we have lived our lives. Like all great works of literature, Slow Man is a novel that asks questions but rarely provides answers; it is a portrait of a man in search of truth. Paul Rayment's accident changes his perspective on life, and as a result, he begins to address the kinds of universal concerns that define us all: What does it mean to do good? What in our lives is ultimately meaningful? Is it more important for one to feel loved or cared for? How do we define the place that we call "home"? In his clear and uncompromising voice, Coetzee struggles with these issues, and the result is a deeply moving story about love and mortality that dazzles the reader on every page. |
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
|
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940, John Michael Coetzee studied first at Cape Town and later at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in literature. In 1972 he returned to South Africa and joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town. His works of fiction include Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won South Africa's highest literary honor, the Central News Agency Literary Award, and the Life and Times of Michael K., for which Coetzee was awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. He has also published a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life, and several essays collections. He has won many other literary prizes including the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize. In 1999 he again won Britain's prestigious Booker Prize for Disgrace, becoming the first author to win the award twice in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. |
|
|
[home] [news] [this year's award] [publishers] [libraries] [award archive] [dublin city public libraries] [IMPAC] [faqs] [contact us]
Copyright
© 2007 Dublin City Public Libraries
