Diary of a Bad Year: Text Classics, book by J. M. Coetzee

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Introduction by Peter Goldsworthy

She pouts. I was expecting more of a story, she says. It is difficult to get into the swing when the subject keeps changing.

An ageing writer fills his journal: he has opinions about everything. He is challenged by Anya, the smart, irreverent young woman he hires to type his notes. Anya’s boyfriend scorns the writer and schemes against him.

With its three simultaneous voices, Diary of a Bad Year is not only a novel about loneliness, friendship and the possibility of love, it changes the logic of reading itself.

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J. M. Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. His work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. His most recent writing is a trilogy of novels: The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of...

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Peter Goldsworthy has won the FAW Christina Stead Prize for fiction, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and a Helpmann Award, shared with the composer Richard Mills, for the opera Batavia. His poetry and novels have been widely translated; four of his novels and the short story ‘The Kiss’ have been adapted for the stage. His most recent book is the...