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Youth (Paperback)

by J. M. Coetzee (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (Nov 2003)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0142002003
  • ISBN-13: 978-0142002001
  • Product Dimensions: 19.9 x 12.8 x 1.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 500,697 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #43 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > C > Coetzee, J.M.

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Product Description

Product Description

The narrator of Youth, a student in the South Africa of the 1950s, has long been plotting an escape from his native country: from the stifling love of his mother, from a father whose failures haunt him, and from what he is sure is impending revolution. Studying mathematics, reading poetry, saving money, he tries to ensure that when he arrives in the real world, wherever that may be, he will be prepared to experience life to its full intensity, and transform it into art. Arriving at last in London, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance. Instead he succumbs to the monotony of life as a computer programmer, from which random, loveless affairs offer no relief. Devoid of inspiration, he stops writing. An awkward colonial, a constitutional outsider, he begins a dark pilgrimage in which he is continually tested and continually found wanting. Set against the background of the 1960s - Sharpeville, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam - Youth is a remarkable portrait of a consciousness, isolated and adrift, turning in on itself. J.M. Coetzee explores a young man's struggle to find his way in the world with tenderness and a fierce clarity. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

J.M. Coetzee's work includes Dusklands, In the Heart of the Country, which won the premier South African literary award, the CNA Prize, Waiting for the Barbarians, which was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the CNA Prize, Life and Times of Michael K, which won the Booker Prize and the Prix Etranger Femina, Foe, Age of Iron, which won the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, The Master of Petersburg, which won the Irish Times International Fiction Award and the memoir Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life. His most recent novel, Disgrace, won the Booker Prize, making him the only author to have won it twice. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Youth
80% buy the item featured on this page:
Youth 4.0 out of 5 stars (16)
Boyhood: A Memoir
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Summertime
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Customer Reviews

16 Reviews
5 star:
 (7)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (3)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (16 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A Deep and Thoughtful Book, 16 Aug 2003
By D. C. Njoku (Bracknell, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Youth (Paperback)
I'm a Bracknell-based African computer programmer who once had aspirations of being a writer. So reading a book about a Bracknell-based African computer programmer who once had aspirations of being a writer was either going to leave me breathless or livid.

Youth is not a book in which very much happens - and that's because it's a book about real life. The real life of a young man finding his feet in an alien country. But the beauty of Youth is not something as mundane as excitement (any book can give you that), it's the truthfulness of the book (I should know: see paragraph 1). It is the most well-realised book I've read in ages, and in its nuances it contains more feeling than library-fuls of other books.

I guess what I'm saying is that you'll either love it - or be bored silly by it. I loved it. Which is fortunate since it seems so much to be the story of my life.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, 12 Dec 2006
By P. Bird (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Youth (Paperback)
For someone like myself who is interested in writing and in mathematics, I loved this book and didn't want it to end. Coetzee is too cold-hearted to fall in love, too idiosyncratic to make friends and too anal to begin writing so ends up in computers instead. His internal battles rage on. Wonderful stuff. By the way, were the shops really closed on Saturday afternoons in Bracknell in 1963?
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars My favourite Coetzee book, 14 May 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Youth (Paperback)
I am surprised by the ambivalent reviews of this book. I have read several of JM Coetzees books and this is my favourite. Coetzee is a very intelligent and penetrating writer - perhaps this is why his writing has been characterised here as detached. In my opinion, this feature is a virtue. Along with his spare, almost poetic style, this is what makes his books so utterly exhilarating.

'Youth' gets to the heart of the confusion facing a young man torn between worldly constraint and artistic ambition. The everyday dilemmas and insecurities he faces occupy his time more and more as he searches for some kind of grander purpose or secret of artistic success. This is a book that will hypnotize those who have ever found themselves questioning their own life-choices. As the protagonist feels his destiny slowly escaping him, we are left, not with feelings of hopelessness, but with a profound and motivating lesson about the futility of neuroticism and inaction. A wonderful book.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad but penetrating portrait of Coetzee as a young man

This book by South African writer J. M. Coetzee is not exactly an autobiography, as it recounts a few years of his life, from about the time he was 19 to his mid 20s,... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Andres C. Salama

5.0 out of 5 stars Each man is an island
Coetzee's second autobiographical novel is a story of flights and also an 'Education sentimentale'.

It is a flight from the oppressiveness of his family and the love... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Luc REYNAERT

2.0 out of 5 stars Joyless
Just a lazy few words to describe this book: Joyless, tedious, depressing, bleak, humorless...climaxing with the statement I wish I hadn't read it.
Published on 10 Dec 2007 by Riddley Walker

3.0 out of 5 stars A loud ripple
This is not my Top pick when it comes to Coetzee, although I am very happy to have read it. It's apparant total lack of climax makes the small events seem so much bigger and... Read more
Published on 8 Aug 2006 by M. K. Enhorning

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written and so true
No question that this book brings out the melancholy in all of us with literary pretensions who have sat typing numbers into computers for years. Read more
Published on 9 Aug 2004 by Richard Bach

3.0 out of 5 stars Not what I had expected
I was thrilled by the beginning of Youth, it was very vivid and indeed fit perfectly a teenagers' life. Read more
Published on 27 May 2004 by sorana

5.0 out of 5 stars A first Coetzee
Piqued by his laureate status, I decided to sample Coetzee, and picked this book for its slimness and because I had heard such mixed opinion of Disgrace. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2003 by Philip

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
This is the first Coetzee book that I've read, recommended to me by a friend. After reading this over the weekend, I will certainly be eager to look out for some of his other... Read more
Published on 23 Feb 2003 by Tony Snell

3.0 out of 5 stars Void
This was my first book by Coetzee, and so I cannot compare this to his previous work. I found the style cold, distant and sparse, which in a way leant itself to parts of the... Read more
Published on 20 Dec 2002 by scjackson3

2.0 out of 5 stars From a refreshing start to a tedious lamentation
Youth is quite a letdown of sorts. A sequel to Boyhood, it lacks the latter's refreshing feel, simple yet poignant prose and joyful reflections of one's childhood in all its... Read more
Published on 7 Aug 2002 by Stella Navaratnam

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