J. M. Coetzee

Clarkson pays sustained attention to the dynamic interaction between Coetzee's fiction and his critical writing, exploring the Nobel prize-winner's participation in, and contribution to, contemporary literary-philosophical debates. The book engages with the most recent literary and philosophical responses to Coetzee's work.

It considers the ethical and aesthetic implications of the writer's linguistic choices. What is ethically at stake in the decision to write in the third person, or in playing up the etymologies of words.

In what ways do seemingly innocent linguistic decisions have ethical and aesthetic consequences for the position of the speaking or writing self relation to those whom one addresses or in relation to those on whose behalf one speaks, or in relation to a world one attempts to represent or create in writing.