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The Schooldays of Jesus

The Schooldays of Jesus

From the double Booker Prize-winning author of Disgrace, an astonishing novel of new beginnings and the troubles of youth.

'Brilliant... Tenaciously absorbing' Daily Telegraph

David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language, he has begun to make friends and he has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him.

But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. Yet it's here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what adults are capable of.

The Schooldays of Jesus is a mesmerising tale about growing up, and about the choices we are forced to make in our lives.

'Compelling, often very funny, full of sudden depths' Observer

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2016

Reviews

  • Compelling, often very funny, full of sudden depths

    Observer

  • Brilliant...tenaciously absorbing

    Daily Telegraph

  • It is written with the coolness and limpidity that makes Coetzee a master... There were moments where I found it almost too affecting to read

    David Sexton, Evening Standard

  • It’s compulsively enigmatic but surprisingly funny too.

    Metro

  • Coetzee doesn't want to be understood, or explained. He wants, merely, to be read. The Schooldays of Jesus is, indeed, very readable

    The Times

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About the Author

J.M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee’s work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace, Summertime, The Childhood of Jesus and, most recently, The Schooldays of Jesus. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.

J.M. Coetzee

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