The Lives of Animals

Resumen del libro

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.

Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother's lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother's vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority.

At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but--dare he admit it?--strangely on target.

In this landmark book, Nobel Prize-winning 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. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction--Coetzee brings all these elements into play.

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. Coetzee's text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation.

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