Summertime

The writer John Coetzee has died, and a young English biographer sets out to write about the 1970s, the decade when, he believes, Coetzee was learning his trade: a man in his thirties living in a shabby cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his father, a widower. He seeks out people who mattered to Coetzee then: Julia, a married woman who had an affair with him; Margot, the cousin he was fondest of; Adriana, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter he taught English; and some of his old friends and colleagues. Placed beside passages from Coetzee's notebooks, their memories draw an awkward, bookish loner whose manual labour, beard and long hair, and rumoured poetry make both his family and the South Africa of the day suspicious of him.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Autofiction (assigned by AI)

Set in

South Africa, 1970s

Series

Scenes from Provincial Life, book 3

First published

2009

Author's age

69 when first published

ISBN

9781846553189 (Harvill Secker, United Kingdom)

9780670021383 (Viking, United States)

9780099540540 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

9780143118459 (Penguin Books, United States)

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