num_pages: 166
description: In Boyhood, J. M. Coetzee revisits the South Africa of half a century ago, to write about his childhood and interior life. Boyhood's young narrator grew up in a small country town. With a father he imitated but could not respect, and a mother he both adored and resented, he picked his way through a world that refused to explain its rules, but whose rules he knew he must obey. Steering between these contradictions, Boyhood evokes the tensions, delights and terrors of childhood with startling, haunting immediacy. Coetzee examines his young self with the dispassionate curiosity of an explorer rediscovering his own early footprints, and the account of his progress is bright, hard and simply compelling."As funny, cruel and terrifying as life itself. It is also intense and elegant, clearly the product of the complex, subtle imagination which shapes Coetzee's outstanding fiction-As austerely beautiful as would be expected of Coetzee the artist-its aloof, edgy grace and seething passion ensure the narrative is both truthful and mysterious". Irish Times
language: English
title: Boyhood
titlecomplete: Boyhood (Scenes from Provincial Life #1)
characters: John Coetzee
genres: Nobel Prize, South Africa, Novels, Biography Memoir, Africa, 20th Century, Literature, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 5310
places: Worcester, South Africa, Cape Town
series: Scenes from Provincial Life
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Vintage