AustLit
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Includes
-
1y
The Childhood of Jesus
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2013
Z1908494
2013
single work
novel
(taught in 2 units)
''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 Simón 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.
Simón'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.' (Publisher's blurb)
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2y
The Schooldays of Jesus
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2016
9704550
2016
single work
single work
novel
'When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins.'
'David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new country. He is learning the language; he has begun to make friends. He has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him. But he’ll be seven soon. He should be at school. And so David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance in Estrella. It’s here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But it’s here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what grown-ups are capable of.'
'The Schooldays of Jesus, the startling sequel to J. M. Coetzee’s widely praised The Childhood of Jesus, will beguile its readers. With the mysterious simplicity of a fable, it tells a story that raises the most direct questions about life itself.' (Source: Text Publishing website)
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3y
The Death of Jesus
Melbourne
:
Text Publishing
,
2019
17064224
2019
single work
novel
'AFTER The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee completes his trilogy with a new masterwork, The Death of Jesus.
'David loves to kick a soccer ball with his friends in Estrella. His father, Simón, and Bolívar the dog usually watch. His mother, Inés, works in a fashion boutique.
'David still asks lots of questions. In dancing class, he dances as he chooses. He refuses to do sums and the only book he will read is Don Quixote.
'One day, Julio Fabricante, the director of a nearby orphanage, invites David and his friends to form a proper soccer team. David decides to leave Simón and Inés and live with Julio. Before long he succumbs to a mysterious illness. Will he have time to deliver his ‘message’?
'In The Death of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee continues to explore the meaning of a world brimming with questions.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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There Is No Other Place : J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus Trilogy
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Los Angeles Review of Books , June 2020;
— Review of The Jesus Trilogy 2013 series - author novel -
论库切“耶稣系列”小说中乌托邦社会的建构
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Foreign Literature Studies , no. 4 2019; (p. 138-150) 'Coetzee's "Jesus series" novels "Jesus's Childhood" and "Jesus's School Days" centered on the protagonist David's childhood and elementary school growth experience, shaping a utopian society free from exploitation and oppression. Based on Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope, this article analyzes the utopian world in the "Jesus Series" from the three dimensions of educational utopia, marriage utopia, and religious utopia, and finds that the author uses the utopian society in the novel. Constructs, reflects on and criticizes the various shortcomings of the current Western society, and its purpose of constructing utopian society is to awaken people’s inner utopian ideals and encourage people to transcend the shackles of the existing world and become free and comprehensive individuals, thus realizing people Liberation.' (Publication summary)
-
There Is No Other Place : J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus Trilogy
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Los Angeles Review of Books , June 2020;
— Review of The Jesus Trilogy 2013 series - author novel -
论库切“耶稣系列”小说中乌托邦社会的建构
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Foreign Literature Studies , no. 4 2019; (p. 138-150) 'Coetzee's "Jesus series" novels "Jesus's Childhood" and "Jesus's School Days" centered on the protagonist David's childhood and elementary school growth experience, shaping a utopian society free from exploitation and oppression. Based on Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope, this article analyzes the utopian world in the "Jesus Series" from the three dimensions of educational utopia, marriage utopia, and religious utopia, and finds that the author uses the utopian society in the novel. Constructs, reflects on and criticizes the various shortcomings of the current Western society, and its purpose of constructing utopian society is to awaken people’s inner utopian ideals and encourage people to transcend the shackles of the existing world and become free and comprehensive individuals, thus realizing people Liberation.' (Publication summary)
