"J.M. Coetzee, Winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature" J. M. Coetzee is an internationally renowned novelist, essayist, and literary critic whose many books include The Childhood of Jesus and Age of Iron. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2003. The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones,...

David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simon and Ines take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolivar to watch over him. But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, with the guidance of the three sisters who own the farm where Simon and Ines work, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers,...

When interrogation experts arrive, the Magistrate is jolted into sympathy for their victims and an act of rebellion gets him imprisoned as an enemy of the state.

An English biographer works on a posthumous book detailing the life of John Coetzee during his thirties, but after interviewing five of Coetzee's close acquaintances, an awkward image of the South African writer is revealed.

The Magistrate of an isolated frontier settlement on the border of an unnamed empire looks forward to an easy retirement until the arrival of Colonel Roll, whose task it is to report on the activities of the 'barbarians' and on the security situation on the border. Joll conducts a series of ruthless interrogations, which leads the Magistrate to question his loyalty to the empire.