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Literary Fiction · MelancholicA gardener pushes his sick mother across a country at war in a homemade cart
Life & Times of Michael K
1983Moderate readSlow pace
★ Booker Prize, 1983
A gardener tries to live outside a civil war
In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his ailing mother from Cape Town to the farm where she grew up. After she dies, he keeps going, trying to live off the land as the conflict goes on around him. It won the 1983 Booker Prize.
More about this book
Who
Michael K, a quiet man with a cleft lip.
World
A civil-war South Africa.
What makes it different
It is the first of Coetzee's two Booker winners.
Feel
Austere and haunting.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Life & Times of Michael KWikipedia