
Stranger Shores a collection of JM Coetzee's essays from 1986 to 1999 was followed by Inner Workings which contained those from 2000 to 2005 Late Essays gathers together Coetzee's literary essays since 2006 The subjects covered range from Daniel Defoe in the early eighteenth century to Coetzee's contemporary Philip Roth Coetzee has had a long-standing interest in German literature & here he engages with the work of Goethe Hoelderlin Kleist & Walser There are four fascinating essays on fellow Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett & he looks at the work of three Australian writers Patrick White Les Murray & Gerald Murnane There are essays too on Tolstoy's great novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich on Flaubert's masterpiece Madame Bovary & on the Argentine modernist Antonio Di Benedetto JM Coetzee a great novelist himself is a wise & insightful guide to these works of international literature that span three centuries