The Death of Jesus
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
The luminous new novel from 'one of the best writers of our time', double Booker Prize winner J. M. Coetzee.
'Full of truth, tearfully moving to read... Brilliant' Evening Standard
Simón and David - a tall ten-year-old - are in a new land, together with a woman named Inés. The small family have found a home in which David can thrive.
But David is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends. He shows unusual talent. When David announces that he wants to live with Julio and the children in his care, Simón and Inés are stunned. David is leaving them, and they can only love him and bear witness.
The Death of Jesus is the completion of an incomparable trilogy in which J. M. Coetzee explores the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.
* A New York Times Notable Book *
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'Extraordinary... Coetzee stands as the pre-eminent novelist in the English-writing world' New Statesman
'You will read its cool, dry final sentences - as I did - with tears in your eyes' The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The thoughtful, clear-eyed final installment of Nobel laureate Coetzee's Jesus trilogy picks up three years after The Schooldays of Jesus. David, now age 10, remains an enigmatic prodigy, skilled at soccer, dance, and arcane mathematics, and living under the watchful eye of his ruminative adopted father, Simon who again narrates and Ines, his protective adoptive mother. The family, living in a Spanish-speaking town called Estrella in an unnamed country, is disrupted when Dr. Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, challenges David and his friends to play soccer against the orphans' team. Almost immediately, David is enchanted by the orphans, and runs away to live with them. After David comes down with a mysterious neurological disorder that makes him prone to sudden falls, he returns home to Simon and Ines. Simon notices changes in David; he is aloof with Simon and Ines and unsettled by questions about the afterlife. David has also attracted a band of followers who treat him with messianic devotion as he recites stories from Don Quixote. Like in previous volumes, Coetzee's simple, clean prose is guided by philosophical questions, and Simon's humanistic reflections provide a thrilling contrast to David's bumpy journey of faith and acceptance of his mortality. This is an ambitious and satisfying conclusion.
