num_pages: 166
description: "Fiercely revealing, bluntly unsentimental. . .a telling portrait of the artist as a young man that illuminates the hidden source of his art." — Michiko Kakutani,  The New York TimesJ.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus , is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016  will be available January 2018. Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, tormented by guilt and fear. With a father he despised, and a mother he both adored and resented, he led a double life—the brilliant and well-behaved student at school, the princely despot at home, always terrified of losing his mother's love. His first encounters with literature, the awakenings of sexual desire, and a growing awareness of apartheid left him with baffling questions; and only in his love of the high veld ("farms are places of freedom, of life") could he find a sense of belonging. Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for, but never could have expected.
language: English
title: Boyhood
titlecomplete: Boyhood (Scenes from Provincial Life #1)
characters: John Coetzee
genres: 20th Century, Coming Of Age, Nobel Prize, Africa, South Africa, Literary Fiction, Novels, Literature, Fiction, Biography Memoir
ratings_count: 5308
places: Cape Town, South Africa, Worcester
series: Scenes from Provincial Life
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Penguin Books