Library

This book is the sequel to Coetzee's "The Childhood of Jesus". David is a little boy who loves to ask questions. Simon and Ines take him to a new town to raise him. David learned a new language, made new friends, and started school. He joined the dance academy, where he learned to summon numbers from the sky and learned the meaning of growth. In this book, Coetzee explores what it means to grow up, what it means to be a parent, the conflict between emotion and reason, and how we choose our own path in life.

"Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons" takes the fictional Australian writer and elderly Elizabeth Costello as the protagonist. In the form of "Eight Lessons", it records the speeches she gave when she gave speeches, participated in conferences, accepted interviews, and visited relatives and friends around the world, as well as the conversations and debates she had with others. The book not only discusses serious issues such as realism, humanities, and animal rights, but also intersperses Costello's life memories and interactions with others, vividly portraying the image of such a writer with a withdrawn personality, harsh words, and clear opinions. This novel adopts an experimental writing method. Faced with such a novel text, readers may wish to follow Coetzee's characters to experience the desolate state of mind - when the protagonist is dealing with the world, you can almost discover the spiritual trap of current life.

"Moral Stories" is a collection of Coetzee's short stories. The Chinese version is introduced for the first time, including "Dogs", "Stories", "Vanity", "When Women Get Old", "Old Women and Cats", "Lies" and "Glass Slaughterhouse", a total of seven stories. The novel uses mother and child, love and desire, youth and aging, and the relationship between humans and animals as entry points. It uses speculative dialogue and psychological portrayal to create a female image with rich heart and distinctive personality. The story is concise but meaningful, presenting Coetzee's deep thinking on the nature of human morality and the situation of life. A reader's comment on the Goodread page reads: "The seven stories are all shallow and profound. Some passages need to be read repeatedly to understand the author's meaning. I will keep this book and read it frequently 20 years later." "When I first heard about Coetzee, the Nobel Prize winner, I thought his novels were difficult and obscure; after reading these stories, I found that his style is actually clear, profound, and light."

Mrs. Curran, who lives alone in South Africa, was diagnosed with cancer and her life began to countdown. She wrote a letter to her daughter in the United States, telling her about the life she was going through and everything in her heart. She was talking like she was mumbling to herself. As a white intellectual woman, she was protected by the political system, but she witnessed with her own eyes the tragedies suffered by those around her due to the apartheid system. Faced with her own approaching death and the death of others caused by the sins of the system, she fell into deep powerlessness, anger, sadness and shame... In telling her daughter, she revealed another self, and also vented without reservation her questioning, spurring and reflection on herself and this era. Quotes from the book: "I don't know what freedom is, yet I know what unfreedom is." "I sometimes feel angry at people who have dirty hands - you have seen, a shameful anger, as stupid as the person who caused it - but I admit that, in a sense, they live in me too. So, when I am angry Curse them to death, and I wish death to myself. In the name of dignity. A dignity in an honest sense. "For all those who have been insulted and harmed, who have been trampled upon and ridiculed."