Vitenam and Pynchon - Wrong Question?

[the Robot Vegetable]

> Anyone know more about Coetzee's work (hag presumably must). He has
> three other novels which I have not yet read but am placing at the top
> of the pile.

  I have read _Waiting For The Barbarians_ and consider it among the
  best books I have read.  It portrays the impact of despotism on the
  lives of those in marginal border towns,  where the rigid views of
  Us and Them tear apart the fabric of relationships that people have
  developed to make their peace with the world.

  I recently finished _A Bend In The River_ by V.S.Naipaul.  I got
  very much the same hit from it as from _WFTB_.

  I am now reading _The Life & Times Of Michael K_, for which Coetzee
  won the Booker.  It is excellent so far, 40 pages in, and tells the
  story of a mentally retarded fellow who is trying to return his mom
  and then his mom's ashes to her home through a south Arfican country
  racked with civil war.

  An excellent story by Wilma Stockenstrom, _The Expedition To The
  Baobab Tree_, translated by Coetzee from Afrikaans, is a lyrical tale,
  searing with it's beauty, of a woman fleeing gender based tyranny.

  Coetzee's other work includes: _In The Heart Of The Country_, which
  concernes the meditations of a disturbed Afrikaner spinster; _Foe_;
  _Age Of Iron_, of a dying woman and her relations to a homeless
  alcoholix; and _The Master Of St. Petersberg_, the story of a Russian
  novelist who becomes involved in revolutionary intrigue.

  veg