Life & Times Of Michael K
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
Winner of the Booker Prize, J.M. Coetzee's haunting literary novel chronicles the quiet, solitary journey of Michael K, a simple gardener born with a harelip who attempts to carry his ailing mother across a war-torn South Africa to her rural birthplace. Set against the backdrop of a nameless civil conflict, the narrative uncovers the brutal indifference of bureaucratic systems as they repeatedly attempt to classify, contain, and define a man who resists all categorization. Written in Coetzee's characteristically spare and precise prose, the novel presents Michael K not as a hero of resistance but as a figure of profound, almost elemental passivity — a man whose only desire is to be left alone to tend the earth. The tone is austere yet deeply compassionate, illustrating how the human spirit can endure oppression not through defiance, but through a stubborn, wordless withdrawal from the machinery of power. Life & Times of Michael K stands as one of the most morally searching works in contemporary world literature, arguing that true freedom may lie not in action, but in the refusal to be consumed.
Author: J.M. Coetzee
Format: Hardback
Published: 1983, Secker & Warburg
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
Winner of the Booker Prize, J.M. Coetzee's haunting literary novel chronicles the quiet, solitary journey of Michael K, a simple gardener born with a harelip who attempts to carry his ailing mother across a war-torn South Africa to her rural birthplace. Set against the backdrop of a nameless civil conflict, the narrative uncovers the brutal indifference of bureaucratic systems as they repeatedly attempt to classify, contain, and define a man who resists all categorization. Written in Coetzee's characteristically spare and precise prose, the novel presents Michael K not as a hero of resistance but as a figure of profound, almost elemental passivity — a man whose only desire is to be left alone to tend the earth. The tone is austere yet deeply compassionate, illustrating how the human spirit can endure oppression not through defiance, but through a stubborn, wordless withdrawal from the machinery of power. Life & Times of Michael K stands as one of the most morally searching works in contemporary world literature, arguing that true freedom may lie not in action, but in the refusal to be consumed.