The Childhood of Jesus

Author(s): J. M. Coetzee

Fiction.

'The child is silent. For a while he too is silent. Then he speaks. 'Please believe me - please take it on faith - this is not a simple matter. The boy is without mother. What that means I cannot explain to you because I cannot explain it to myself. Yet I promise you, if you will simply say Yes, without forethought, without afterthought, all will become clear to you, as clear as day, or so I believe. Therefore: will you accept this child as yours?'
David is a small boy who comes by boat across the ocean to a new country. He has been separated from his parents, and has lost the piece of paper that would have explained everything. On the boat a stranger named Simon takes it upon himself to look after the boy. On arrival they are assigned new names, new birthdates. They know little Spanish, the language of their new country, and nothing about its customs. They have also suffered a kind of forgetting of old attachments and feelings. They are people without a past. Simon's goal is to find the boy's mother. He feels sure he will know her when he sees her. And David? He wants to find his mother too but he also wants to understand where he is and how he fits in. He is a boy who is always asking questions.
The Childhood of Jesus is not like any other novel you have read. This beautiful and surprising fable is about childhood, about destiny, about being an outsider. It is a novel about the riddle of experience itself.


Product Information

* High profile review coverage in all major national broadsheet and tabloid newspapers * Review coverage in all literary journals and magazines * Review coverage on national radio and online * Author will give public readings in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide * Large-scale consumer marketing campaign, including airport lightwalls and broad print and online advertising * Strong social media campaign including competitions * Significant budget for bookseller catalogues * Exclusive video of the author reading from the novel available in early 2013, for hosting on bookseller sites * Promotions and giveaways with targeted subscriber groups, including book, classical music and opera lovers * Reading Group Notes available for download at www.textpublishing.com.au * Limited number of bound proofs available

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 and Times of Michael K, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He lives in Adelaide.

General Fields

  • : 9781922079701
  • : Text Publishing Co
  • : The Text Publishing Company
  • : June 2012
  • : Australia
  • : January 2013
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : J. M. Coetzee
  • : Hardback
  • : New edition
  • : 813.00
  • : 288