There may be many readers who, on hearing of J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize, immediately thought about the cost of clarity. There is so much, after all, missing from Coetzee's distinguished books. His prose is precise, but blanched; in place of comedy there is only bitter irony (this is Coetzee's large difference from Beckett, whom he so clearly admires); in place of society, with its domestic and familial affiliations, there is political society; and underfoot is often the tricky camber of allegory, insisting on pulling one's step in certain directions. Coetzee has himself, with characteristic honesty, lamented that South African literature is 'a less than fully human literature, unnaturally preoccupied with power and the torsions of power . . . it is exactly the kind of literature one would expect people to write from a prison.'

LRB 23 October 2003 | PDF Download