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The Schooldays of Jesus

The Schooldays of Jesus

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016

Observer and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year 2016

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, Davíd 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. But 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.

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

About the Author

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