A travers huit discours, une romancière australienne vieillissante dévoile peu à peu sa vie et ses pensées intimes. Malgré la célébrité et l'adulation émergent peu à peu les angoisses de mort qui taraudent cette femme en fin de vie.

Elizabeth Costello

Étouffée par la torpeur de la domination coloniale en Afrique du Sud, et pris au piège dans une toile d'oppression réciproque, un éleveur de moutons solitaire cherche le réconfort dans les bras d'une concubine noire. Mais lorsque sa fille aigrie demoiselle Magda se sent honteux, ce faux bond à travers les marques fracture raciale à la fin d'une paix fragile féodale. Comme elle rêve fou de vengeance sanglante, sstarts Magda Conscience à la dérive et la ligne entre la réalité et le fonctionnement de son imagination exaltée devient floue. Ce qui suit est la fable de la réponse passionnée, obsédée et violente d'une femme à une Afrique qui ne sera pas l'écouter.

Au coeur de ce pays

A divorced, middle-aged English professor finds himself increasingly unable to resist affairs with his female students. When discovered by the college authorities, he is expected to apologise and repent in an effort to save his job, but he refuses to become a scapegoat in what he see as as a show trial designed to reinforce a stringent political correctness. He preempts the authorities and leaves his job, and the city, to spend time with his grown-up lesbian daughter on her remote farm. Things between them are strained - there is much from the past they need to reconcile - and the situation becomes critical when they are the victims of a brutal and horrifying attack. In spectacularly powerful and lucid prose, J.M. Coetzee uses all his formidable skills to engage with a post-apartheid culture in unexpected and revealing ways. This examination into the sexual and political lawlessness of modern South Africa as it tries desperately to start a fresh page in its history is chilling, uncompromising and unforgettable.

Disgrâce

Stifled by the torpor of colonial South Africa, and trapped in a web of reciprocal oppression, a lonely sheep farmer seeks comfort in the arms of a black concubine. But when his embittered spinster daughter Magda feels shamed, this lurch across the racial divide marks the end of a tenuous feudal peace. As she dreams madly of bloody revenge, Magda's consciousnes sstarts to drift and the line between fact and the workings of her excited imagination becomes blurred. What follows is the fable of a woman's passionate, obsessed and violent response to an Africa that will not heed her.

Au Coeur De Ce Pays

En 1986, au Cap, Elizabeth Curren se meurt d'un cancer, et elle est brutalement confrontée à l'explosion de rage que le système de l'Apartheid a engendrée. Dans une longue lettre à sa fille exilée en Amérique, Elizabeth relate les événements qui ponctuent ses derniers jours. Témoin de l'émeute et de la répression dans un township voisin, elle découvre le corps criblé de balles du fils de sa domestique noire, et assiste à l'exécution par la police d'un autre adolescent... Parvenue au terme de son existence, avec pour ange de la mort et confident un clochard réfugié chez elle, Elizabeth tentera de faire sa paix avec le monde. Avec ces quelques jours dans la vie d'une vieille dame qui prend conscience des revendications de la jeunesse noire, J. M. Coetzee nous offre à sa manière grave, lancinante, un chef d'œuvre.

L'âge de fer

L'Abattoir de verre

An utterly contemporary and deeply thought-provoking novel which addresses the profound unease of countless people in modern democracies around the world.An eminent, seventy-two-year-old Australian writer is invited to contribute to a book entitled Strong Opinions. It is a chance to air some urgent concerns. He writes short essays on the origins of the state, on Machiavelli, on anarchism, on Al-Qaida, on intelligent design, on music. What, he asks, is the origin of the state and the nature of the relationship between citizen and state? How should the citizen of a modern democracy react to the state’s willingness to set aside moral considerations and civil liberties in its war on terror, a war that includes the use of torture? How does the state handle outsiders?In the laundry-room of his apartment block he encounters an alluring young woman. When he discovers she is between jobs he claims failing eyesight and offers her work typing up his manuscript. Anya has no interest in politics but the job provides a distraction, as does the writer’s evident and not unwelcome attraction toward her.Her boyfriend, Alan, an investment consultant who understands the world in harsh neo-liberal economic terms, has reservations about his trophy girlfriend spending time with this 1960s throwback. Taking a lively interest in his affairs, Alan begins to formulate a plan. Diary of a Bad Year is an utterly contemporary work of fiction from one of our greatest writers and deepest thinkers. It addresses the profound unease of countless people in democracies across the world.

Journal d'une année noire

A masterful new novel completes an incomparable trilogy from J. M. Coetzee, Nobel laureate and two-times winner of the Booker Prize   In  The Childhood of Jesus , Simon found a boy, David, and they began life in a new land, together with a woman named Ines. In The Schooldays of Jesus , the small family searched for a home in which David could thrive.  In  The Death of Jesus , David, now a tall ten-year-old, is spotted by Julio Fabricante, the director of a local orphanage, playing football with his friends in the street. He shows unusual talent. When David announces that he wants to go and live with Julio and the children in his care, Simon and Ines are stunned. David is leaving them, and they can only love him and bear witness.  With almost unbearable poignancy J. M. Coetzee explores the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.

Elizabeth Costello

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