Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

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"...there's a stark beauty to these novels of ideas and the haunting images that infuse them. "

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Vulture.com

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"...rich and full of inner tension and suspense."

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The New York Times Book Review - Editor's

choice

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"Coetzee has channeled a host of influences in this novel: Saramago, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Plato, Ishiguro. The novel is strongest in its moments of gently comic surrealism — the spectators in a packed courtroom take a moment to calm themselves by closing their eyes, the man debates with the composer Juan Sebastian whether names are essentially arbitrary, a murdered duck has a funeral ."

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Chicago Tribune