Elizabeth Costello (Magill’s Literary Annual 2004)
At a glance:
- Author: J. M. Coetzee
- First Published: 2003
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1995-2003
- Setting: Pennsylvania, a cruise ship in the Indian Ocean, Massachusetts, South Africa, Australia, Amsterdam, purgatory, and England
- Principal Characters: Elizabeth Costello, John Bernard, Norma Bernard, Susan Moebius, Emmanuel Egudu, Sister Bridget, Aidan Phillips, Paul West, Elizabeth, Lady Chandos, Philip, Lord Chandos
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Twentieth century, Authors or writers, Literature, Twenty-first century, Pennsylvania, England or English people, South Africa or South Africans, 1990’s, Great Britain, Australia or Australians, Vegetarianism, Massachusetts, Indian Ocean
- Locales: England, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Amsterdam, Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Purgatory
Elizabeth Costello, J. M. Coetzee’s ninth book of fiction, appeared in print a few weeks after the Swedish Academy announced that Coetzee had been selected for the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. Though she is not a Nobel laureate, the novel’s eponymous protagonist is, like Coetzee, an accomplished author who has traveled widely and earned widespread acclaim. Costello’s most famous book, The House on Eccles Street, a revision of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) from the perspective of Molly Bloom, seems analogous to Coetzee’s own experiment in literary...
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