The Lives of Animals
Contributors: Amy Gutmann (Editor)
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 127
ISBN-13: 9780691004433
Subjects: Moral and ethical aspects; Fiction - General; Coetzee, J. M. - Prose & Criticism; Fiction; Philosophy; Literary; Animal rights; Modern fiction; Animal welfare; Ethical aspects
Description: 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, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world.

Here the internationally renowned writer J.M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello's own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family.

In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields.