Overview

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.

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9780761866930

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Reviews

Part-memoir, part-biography, part-criticism, Jonathan Crewe's account of the provenance of J.M. Coetzee's fiction is erudite and poignant. In the Middle of Nowhere is the story of a friendship, but one rooted in a shared background and situation. As young literary intellectuals at odds with colonial 'English,' both found wider horizons in the American academy, but without being able to put the past firmly behind them. The intimacy of Crewe's account of the Nobel laureate's intellectual biography makes it essential reading in Coetzee studies. -- David Attwell, English and Related Literature, The University of York Jonathan Crewe helped launch his own distinguished career as a critic with a prescient 1974 article on Dusklands, hailing a new kind of South African novel. J. M. Coetzee's colleague and compatriot in Cape Town in the early 1970s, and his friend then and since, Crewe returns to Coetzee studies with this fascinating critical memoir of their relationship. -- Lars Engle, The University of Tulsa

Author Information

Jonathan Crewe is the Leon Black Emeritus Professor of Shakespearean Studies at Dartmouth College. Born in South Africa, he received his undergraduate education at the University of Natal, and then completed his graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written numerous books and articles on early modern literature, including Shakespeare, and on South African writing.

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