The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Coetzee, edited by Jarad Zimbler, covers the writerly practice of J. M. Coetzee; the author of fourteen novels, three autobiographical fictions, several volumes of translations, critical essays, correspondences, and short stories. This volume of essays is divided into three main parts through which the chapters reveal the main features of Coetzee’s corpus and the impact of the colonial conditions of the apartheid state in South Africa, European imperialism, and the process of decolonization on his works.

Part 1, “Forms,” examines Coetzee’s literary craft through settings, metafictional narration, literary styles, and genre, and it shows how Coetzee challenges literary conventions in order to embrace the question of truth. In chapter 1, “Composition and Craft: Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K,” David Atwell highlights the compositional aspects of Coetzee’s novels as gleaned from the archives at the Harry Ransom Centre at University of Texas in Austin. Atwell displays how Coetzee’s literary practice interacted with the pressures of the apartheid state in South Africa through the process of storytelling and the politicization of language in an effort to entice readers to investigate the embedded meanings in his texts. In chapter 2, “Scenes and Settings: Foe, Boyhood, Youth, Slow Man,” Meg Samuelson tackles how the imagined world in Coetzee’s fiction articulates the real world and how his settings and narrative situate a reality that reflects the “real South” (38). In chapter 3, “Stories and Narration: In the Heart of the Country, The Master of Petersburg, the Childhood of Jesus,” Jarad Zimbler addresses the forms of narration in Coetzee’s stories and the representation of social relations as being shaped and damaged by violence, colonial domination, and oppressive regimes (47). In chapter 4, “Styles: Dusklands, Age of Iron, Disgrace, The Schooldays of Jesus,” David James discusses the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of the narrative perspective in Coetzee’s novels and how Coetzee’s style enhances the reader’s understanding to the ethical, literary, and historical dimensions in his critique of imperialism. In chapter 5, “Genres: Elizabeth Costello, Diary of a Bad Year, Summertime,” Derek Attridge explores Coetzee’s challenge to the reader’s assumptions by disrupting generic conventions; that entails Coetzee’s attempt to question the responsibilities of literary writers and the imaginative capacity of fiction to make truth claims and counter-claims about the world (90).

Part 2, “Relations,” explores Coetzee’s engagement with literature as a translator, scholar, and collaborator with other writers and critics. Chapter 6, “Translations,” by Jan Steyn throws light on Coetzee as a translator who thinks through the hermeneutic methods of translation. Steyn also argues that Coetzee’s translatability was the effect of his clear prose instead of being the cause. In chapter 7, “Collaboration and Correspondence,” Rachel Bower suggests reading with and against Coetzee’s writings by attending to Coetzee’s interviews and the epistolary exchange in fiction and nonfiction. Bower examines how Coetzee’s correspondences open up the possibilities of a dialectical dialogue with oneself and the other (I-you relationship) through new openings, slips, and errors. Chapter 8, “Criticism and Scholarship,” by Sue Kossew tackles Coetzee’s rationale in his ethical and compositional practices under the restraints of censorship. Kossew unfolds how Coetzee’s critical essays and reviews wrestle with literary and philosophical notions in an attempt to liberate literary discourse from its boundaries. In Chapter 9, “Influence and Intertextuality,” Patrick Hayes discusses Coetzee’s conception of intertextuality as a philosophical notion through which Coetzee decenters the figure of the author and the human subject (155). In chapter 10, “Worlds, World-Making, and Southern Horizons,” Ben Etherington reads Coetzee’s worlds and worldliness aside from the debate between localists and universalists, that is, the world Coetzee creates in his fiction and the “real” world that frames the making of his stories. Etherington portrays how the southern horizon in Coetzee’s corpus allows an inclusive scope that overcomes national parameters.

Part 3, “Mediations,” demonstrates Coetzee’s works in relation to other forms, media, discourses, disciplines, institutions, publics, and how life and art are interweaved within them. In chapter 11, “Other Arts and Adaptations,” Michelle Kelly shows how Coetzee’s interest in visual and performing arts helps to understand his works through the expressive powers of these art forms that transcend the limits of prose. Kelly focuses on the preoccupation of Coetzee’s works with the nonverbal capacities of music, opera, and theater and how Coetzee’s engagement with adaptations to his novels challenges the conventions of fidelity. In chapter 12, “Philosophies,” Anthony Uhlmann probes Coetzee’s philosophical questions in his literary works and the role of his literary expression in unsettling the capacity of philosophy to tell new truths given according to Coetzee “fiction is capable of generating truths” (219). Chapter 13, “Lives and Archives,” by Andrew Dean revisits Coetzee’s archival writings through considering the significance of secrets, lies, concealment, and revelation. Dean draws critics’ attention to think through the narrative of truth and self, which Coetzee produces in his archived and published writings. In chapter 14, “Publics and Personas,” Andrew Van Der Vlies tackles Coetzee’s approach toward the cultural capital and literary prestige, which contribute to the circulation of literary works through literary prizes and honorary degrees and how Coetzee scrutinizes the institution of authorship.

In conclusion, this volume of critical essays illustrates a wide range of critical perspectives on the value and relevance of Coetzee’s archival, autobiographical, and biographical materials that bear witness to various historical contexts. It also provides insights on Coetzee’s navigations on generic forms and the representations of truths in his works, and these truths have been conveyed through his local culture and transnational standings.