In the Middle of Nowhere: J.M. Coetzee in South Africa

Relying on the author’s personal recollections as well as on J.M. Coetzee’s autobiographical and fictional works, this book deals with Coetzee’s formation as a writer of international prominence, whose life and writing career began in South Africa. Drawing on Coetzee’s South African writings from Dusklands through Disgrace, the book considers Coetzee’s initial positioning in provincial South African political and literary culture as well as his drastic reframing of South African letters and his breakout into a global career culminating in the award of the Nobel Prize in 2003. The book considers Coetzee almost exclusively in relation to the South Africa from which he emigrated in 1999, but also emphasizes his momentous revision and undoing of the marginalized genre of South African Literature in the service of global authorship. Written in the conviction that Coetzee’s South African works remain his most impassioned and momentous ones, this book seeks to come to terms with their conditions of possibility and distinctive achievement.