Slow Man (First American Edition)

Coetzee, J. M.

ISBN 10: 0670034592 / ISBN 13: 9780670034598

Published by Viking, New York, 2005

About this Item

New York: Viking, 2005. First American edition, first printing, with full number line including the 1. Hardcover. Very Fine in a very fine dust jacket. Publisher's original price intact on front flap ($24.95). Comes with archival-quality mylar dust jacket protector. A tight, clean copy. SLOW MAN tells the story of Paul Rayment, a retired photographer who loses a leg in a bicycle accident and must confront questions of love, dependence, and mortality when visited by novelist Elizabeth Costello. J. M. Coetzee (b. 1940) is a South African born Nobel Prize winning author whose works include DISGRACE, LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHAEL K, and THE MASTER OF PETERSBURG. SLOW MAN was his first novel published after receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.

Seller Inventory # Fiction-Coetzee

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Slow Man (First American Edition)
• Publisher: Viking, New York
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670034592
• ISBN 13: 9780670034598
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Nobel Prize in Literature

About this title

Synopsis

When photographer Paul Rayment loses his leg in a bicycle accident, his solitary life is irrevocably changed. Stubbornly refusing a prosthesis, Paul returns to his bachelor's apartment in Adelaide, uncomfortable with his new dependency on others. He is given to bouts of hopelessness as he looks back on his sixty years of life, but his spirits rise when he finds himself falling in love with Marijana, his practical, down-to-earth Croatian nurse who is struggling to raise her family in a foreign land. As Paul contemplates how to win her heart, he is visited by the mysterious writer Elizabeth Costello, who challenges Paul to take an active role in his own life.
In this new book, J. M. Coetzee offers a meditation on what makes us human, on what it means to grow older and reflect on how we have lived our lives. Slow Man is a novel that asks questions but rarely provides answers; it is a portrait of a man in search of truth. Paul Rayment's accident changes his perspective on life, and as a result he begins to address the kinds of universal concerns that define us all: What does it mean to do good? What in our lives is ultimately meaningful? Is it more important to be loved or to be cared for? How do we define the place we call "home"?

About the Author

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940, John Michael Coetzee studied first at Cape Town and later at the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in literature. In 1972 he returned to South Africa and joined the faculty of the University of Cape Town. His works of fiction include Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, which won South Africa���s highest literary honor, the Central News Agency Literary Award, and the Life and Times of Michael K., for which Coetzee was awarded his first Booker Prize in 1983. He has also published a memoir, Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life, and several essays collections. He has won many other literary prizes including the Lannan Award for Fiction, the Jerusalem Prize and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize. In 1999 he again won Britain���s prestigious Booker Prize for Disgrace, becoming the first author to win the award twice in its 31-year history. In 2003, Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.