Boyhood

In Boyhood, J. M. Coetzee revisits the South Africa of half a century ago, to write about his childhood and interior life. Boyhood's young narrator grew up in a small country town. With a father he imitated but could not respect, and a mother he both adored and resented, he picked his way through a world that refused to explain its rules, but whose rules he knew he must obey. Steering between these contradictions, Boyhood evokes the tensions, delights and terrors of childhood with startling, haunting immediacy. Coetzee examines his young self with the dispassionate curiosity of an explorer rediscovering his own early footprints, and the account of his progress is bright, hard and simply compelling.

Review: This life is described with such skill, such exactitude and such relentlessness that I found myself gasping for air... Coetzee has achieved something universal in his work...a fine book, probably the best description of a childhood I have ever read * The Times *

As funny, cruel and terrifying as life itself. It is also intense and elegant, clearly the product of the complex, subtle imagination which shapes Coetzee's outstanding fiction... As austerely beautiful as would be expected of Coetzee the artist...its aloof, edgy grace and seething passion ensure the narrative is both truthful and mysterious * Irish Times *

Boyhood is a deeply-felt and utterly compelling account of a South African childhood: the narrative style is as spare and lean as the Karoo flatlands which form its backdrop * Daily Telegraph *

The economy with which Coetzee makes sense of his past is evidence, once again, of his outstanding talent * Independent on Sunday *

An uncannily accurate picture of the way things were in South Africa * Literary Review *

Prizes: Short-listed for South African Booksellers' Choice Award 1998.