Books

Book review: JM Coetzee’s light undimmed in face of mortality

In The Pole and Other Stories, the Nobel laureate faces the physical actuality of life and death with such rigour that he touches the mystical

JM Coetzee: this short story collection takes a scalpel to divine matters, asking if they are in fact just physical processes – but his protagonists’ secular viewpoints can’t keep those nagging metaphysical questions at bay

At 83, Nobel laureate JM Coetzee is staring down the barrel of non-existence. Through his ageing characters – thinly veiled versions of himself – he remains as clear-eyed as ever about mortality.

This short story collection takes a scalpel to divine matters, asking if they are in fact just physical processes. Love, the afterlife, the existence of a soul and its bodily expression: they all get Coetzee’s surgical treatment. However, his protagonists’ secular viewpoints can’t ...