Youth

Title: Youth

Author: JM Coetzee

Binding: Hardcover

EAN: 9780436205828

Condition: Good

Please note: Below is a general description of how we classify our condition types. If you would like a more precise picture or have specific questions, please send us a message and we will be happy to look into it for you.

Condition descriptions:
- As New: Hardly any signs of use, almost as new.
- Good: May show minor signs of use, such as some discoloration or a name on the endpapers, but generally no underlining or notes in the text.
- Fair: Book in fair condition. May show signs of use, such as discoloration, reading creases in spine, underlinings, notes, light soiling at edges, dog-ears, or a crooked spine.
- New: Book is new.

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. JM Coetzee explores a young man's struggle to find his way in the world with tenderness and a fierce clarity.