Boyhood

In Boyhood, award-winning author J.M. Coetzee revisits the South Africa of half a century ago to write about his childhood and interior life.

Coetzee grew up in a new development north of Cape Town, tormented by guilt and fear. With a father he despised, and a mother he both adored and resented, he led a double life – the brilliant and well-behaved student at school, the princely despot at home, always terrified of losing his mother's love.

His first encounters with literature, the awakenings of sexual desire, and a growing awareness of apartheid left him with baffling questions, and only in his love of the high veld ('farms are places of freedom, of life') could he find a sense of belonging.

Bold and telling, this masterly evocation of a young boy's life is the book Coetzee's many admirers have been waiting for, but never could have expected.