Summertime

Resumen del libro

A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972 1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was 'finding his feet as a writer'.

Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. From their testimony emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual with little talent for opening himself to others. Within the family he is regarded as an outsider, someone who tried to flee the tribe and has now returned, chastened. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time.

Sometimes heartbreaking, often very funny, Summertime shows us a great writer as he limbers up for his task. It completes the majestic trilogy of fictionalised memoir begun with Boyhood and Youth.

Biografía del autor

x{0026}lt;P x{0026}lt;B J.M. Coetzeex{0026}lt;/B nació en 1940 en Ciudad del Cabo, Sudáfrica. Allí se crió y más tarde cursó estudios universitarios para luego irse a la Universidad de Austin, Texas, y doctorarse en Literatura. En 1972 volvió a Sudáfrica, y desde entonces es profesor en la Universidad de Ciudad del Cabo, además de traductor, lingüista, crítico literario y, sin duda, uno de los escritores más importantes que ha dado Sudáfrica.x{0026}lt;/P x{0026}lt;P Premio Nobel de Literatura en 2003, ha sido galardonado con numerosos premios, entre los que destaca el prestigioso premio Booker, que ganó en dos ocasiones, con x{0026}lt;I Vida y época de Michael Kx{0026}lt;/I (2006) y con x{0026}lt;I Desgraciax{0026}lt;/I (2000). Otros títulospublicados en Literatura Random House incluyen x{0026}lt;I Infanciax{0026}lt;/I (2001), x{0026}lt;I Juventud x{0026}lt;/I (2002), x{0026}lt;I Elizabeth Costellox{0026}lt;/I (2004), x{0026}lt;I Hombre lentox{0026}lt;/I (2005), x{0026}lt;I Diario de un mal añox{0026}lt;/I (2007), x{0026}lt;I La infancia de Jesúsx{0026}lt;/I (2013), x{0026}lt;I Los días de Jesús en la escuelax{0026}lt;/I (2017) y x{0026}lt;I Siete cuentos moralesx{0026}lt;/I (2018). También ha publicado varios libros de ensayo, entre los que destacan x{0026}lt;I Contra la censurax{0026}lt;/I (Debate, 2007), x{0026}lt;I Costas extrañasx{0026}lt;/I (Debate, 2004), x{0026}lt;I Mecanismosinternosx{0026}lt;/I (2009), x{0026}lt;I Las manos de los maestrosx{0026}lt;/I (dos volúmenes, 2016), la correspondencia mantenida con Paul Auster, x{0026}lt;I Aquí y ahorax{0026}lt;/I (2012), y una conversación con la terapeuta Arabella Kurtz, x{0026}lt;I El buen relatox{0026}lt;/I (2015). Asimismo, fue galardonado en España con los premios Llibreter 2003 y Reino de Redonda (2001), creado por el escritor Javier Marías.x{0026}lt;/P