Elizabeth Costello

Elizabeth Costello is a humane, moral, and uncompromising creation.

The subject of J.M. Coetzee’s latest work of fiction is an Australian writer of international renown -- fêted, studied and honoured. Famous principally for an early novel that established her reputation and from which, it seems, she will never escape, she has reached the stage, late in life, where her remaining function is to be venerated and applauded.

One of a new breed of intellectual nomads, her life has become a series of engagements in sterile conference rooms throughout the world -- a private consciousness obliged to reveal itself to a curious public: the presentation of a major award at an American college where she is required to deliver a lecture; a sojourn… Keep Reading