Old Myths – Modern Empires: Power, Language and Identity in J. M. Coetzee’s Work

This study gives substantial coverage and close critical attention to a wide range of Coetzee’s published writings, including the perspective of post-apartheid South Africa. Taking into consideration Coetzee’s formation, Old Myths – Modern Empires situates the author’s writing in the framework of both postmodernist and postcolonial theory and criticism. In addition, it links the political and social aspects of Coetzee’s writing, its South African provenance and its engagement – often oblique – with contemporary issues, with the formal questions regarding structure, rhetoric and narrative strategies in the novels. This monograph thus takes into account the changes in critical reception – exemplified by the Nobel Prize the author was awarded in 2004 – and the transformations in the social and political context, and by approaching Coetzee’s fiction from a variety of critical angles, it offers a thorough assessment of the author.