THE CHILDHOOD OF JESUS

328 pp., paperback, Reprint, London, (2013) 2021

Book one in the Jesus Trilogy. After crossing oceans, a man and a boy – both strangers to each other – arrive in a new land where they are assigned a new name, a new birthday, a new life. The boy, David, has lost his mother and Simón promises to look after him.

"As ever, JM Coetzee manages to dodge every category with mesmeric cunning... This limpid, gnomic and surprisingly witty tale will take root in your imagination" Boyd Tonkin, Independent

"Coetzee has always had the enviable ability, in a writer, to make a virtue of his limitations. The prose is very plain; the characters are a little abstract; the questions they ask aren't quite as interesting as they suppose. Coetzee knows all this, but where it leaves the reader I'm not so sure." Benjamin Markovitz, The Observer

J.M.Coetzee's work includes "Waiting for the Barbarians", "Life & Times of Michael K", "Disgrace" and "Diary of a Bad Year." He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.