Product Description

First published in 1983 and winner of the Booker Prize. Set in a turbulent South Africa, a young gardener decides to take his mother away from the violence towards a new life in the abandoned countryside, but finds that war follows wherever he goes. From the author of DUSKLANDS and IN THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #137796 in Books
• Published on: 1985-01-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
J.M. Coetzee is a professor of general literature at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of seven novels, including The Master of Petersburg, and of the memoir Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. His many awards include the Booker Prize in 1983 for The Life & Times of Michael K, the Prix Femina and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. J.M. Coetzee is the first author ever to be awarded two Booker Prizes.

Customer Reviews

An uplifting tale of spiritual courage
Michael K is by most people's reckoning a subnormally endowed specimen of a human being - physically and mentally handicapped, he appears to be no more than one of life's cruel failures. It is only his indomitable spirit and courage which has helped him endure constant hardship and ultimately transcend human suffering brought upon by South Africa's apartheid regime. At one level, the story seems to be about the victory of spiritual and morale courage over man's cruelty. Just as Michael's natural otherworldliness served as a protective cloak against life's slings and arrows, Coetzee seems to be telling us to take heart and emulate Michael - if such a sorry human specimen can prevail against all odds, so can we. At another level, the story seems to me to be about the independence or autonomy of the human spirit from the realities of social and political life. Through the eyes of soldiers and other conscious members of society, we see a crumbling social order and chaos everywhere. Everything touched by them is, as it were, defiled and rendered foul. Only in Michael's makebelieve world does he still find his private space and food still fit for human consumption. Coetzee's slim novel makes for compelling reading. His message is simple but powerful and uplifting.

A difficult story, told well
Even without the K after the Michael, it would be difficult to read this book without thinking about Kafka. Michael K is a simple gardner from a class and a situation where to be simple is not to be protected, but to be unnecessary and even guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of being expendable, of being bewildered, of being unable to cope or understand the different categories of change around him. Coetzee has created a character who has been judged and found wanting long before he understands that this is even a possibility.

What is interesting about Michael and what is also one of the organising aspects of the book is that Michael does not stay in passive opposition to his situation but gradually moves to a kind of active opposition-- at least as active as such a limited character with limited power is capable of carrying out. A lot of the criticism of this book talks about post-colonial literature and racial relations and all of those things are certainly backdrop to the story, but it is mostly about power imbalance and the effect of power imbalance on the people least equipped to do anything except express confusion. Michael K is a disenfranchised everyman, someone who is only as useful as society is kind.

This is only the second of two Coetzee books that I have read. I unintentionally picked the two books with which he won Booker prizes (this one and Disgrace). If this had been the first Coetzee that I picked up, as good as it is, it may well be that I would not have rushed to read another one. It is a relentlessly unhappy book, and its vision of freedom that Michael is able to achieve is not a glorious one. Michael apparently has only the freedom to be misunderstood and protected, misunderstood and persecuted, or alone and dead. As much as the world around him is creating Michael, it is hard to imagine a world in which he ever had the possibility of happiness. That kind of bleakness is hard to read and there is not even Beckett-style bitter humor to lighten the pages or encourage the reader. Disgrace was not exactly a happy book, but there was a complexity in it that I somehow miss in Life & Times.

It is not where I would start if I had not read any other Coetzee first, but it is difficult to argue with the brilliance of the writing (or the writer).

Spare, clear as a diamond and a reminder we have choices
Each sentence uttered by Michael K, the anti-hero of this book, is the voice of sanity, understanding, compassion and truth in a book full of voices of hate and confusion. Of course it's Michael K who is alledged to be the idiot, the simpleton. He's the only one who has chosen to listen to the voice inside each of us that says, "This is poison, avoid it, this is paradise, experience it now and stay here". I was reminded life isn't so very confusing when it's pared down to simplicity. I don't ever want to be the person with a weapon in my hand telling someone I'm just following orders or I'm just doing my job. Thank you, Mr. Coetzee for writing books for us to read.