Buy this book on-line

Coetzee, J. M : Diary Of A Bad Year: The Deluxe Edition

Harvill Secker Press, London, England, 2007

ISBN 1846551668

First Edition / First Printing. As New in No Dust Jacket, As Issued. 231 pages. The author's eleventh novel. One of the greatest novels of our time. Deluxe Leatherbound And Slipcased Edition of 100 numbered and signed copies. Except for the Australian, the Deluxe Edition precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. The Deluxe Edition is now rare. An austerely elegant production by Harvill Secker Press: Regular-sized volume format. Blue goatskin leather binding with gilt titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Text by J. M. Coetzee. Marbled endpapers. Maroon cloth slipcase. Printed on archival stock paper in the United Kingdom to the highest standards. Without DJ, as issued. Presents, in its ultimate collectible format, J. M. Coetzee's "Diary of A Bad Year". Addresses the profound unease of countless people in modern democracies. "An eminent, seventy-two-year-old Australian writer is invited to contribute to a book entitled 'Strong Opinions'. It is a chance to air some urgent concerns. He writes short essays on the origins of the state, on Machiavelli, on anarchism, on Al-Qaida, on Intelligent Design, on music. What, he asks, is the origin of the state and the nature of the relationship between citizen and state? How should the citizen of a modern democracy react to the state's willingness to set aside moral considerations and civil liberties in its War on Terror? How does the state handle outsiders? In the laundry-room of his apartment block, he encounters an alluring young woman. When he discovers she is between jobs, he claims failing eyesight and offers her work typing up his manuscript. Anya has no interest in politics, but the job provides a distraction, as does the writer's evident and not unwelcome attraction toward her. An utterly contemporary work of fiction from one of our greatest writers and deepest thinkers" (Publisher's blurb). Unlike most contemporary writers, J. M. Coetzee has been an "engaged" writer from the beginning, during his anti-Apartheid days in South Africa. He has also always offered the greatest aesthetic pleasure, in prose of the highest literary quality and in his profoundly speculative, anti-didactic, anti-dogmatic, and anti-propagandistic reflections on the major issues of our time. The novel's title is an allusion to Coetzee's idol, Daniel Defoe ("Journal of The Plague Year") while being at the same time, a novel of ideas in the grand tradition of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka. An absolute "must-have" title for J. M. Coetzee collectors. This copy is one of the Deluxe Leatherbound And Slipcased Edition, indicated/numbered as such on the Front Limitation Page (Number 49). It is very prominently and beautifully numbered and signed in black ink-pen by J. M. Coetzee. This title is a great book. This is one of few copies of the Deluxe Edition still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the Lannan Award in 1998, the Jerusalem Prize in 1999, the Booker Prize in 1983 for "The Life & Times of Michael K" and in 1999 for "Disgrace", the first writer to win the most prestigious British literary award twice. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER J. M. COETZEE TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1846551668.

1
1

Bibliophile Bookbase for antiquarian books, maps and prints.