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Jul 27, 2018RogerDeBlanck rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
In Coetzee's powerful novel, Life and Times of Michael K, the title character is a young mentally-challenged man who works as a manual laborer. He is caught within the turmoil of race relations and bloodshed during a South African civil war, which is augured as sometime in the future. K’s lonely, solemn life tries to etch out a personal refuge amid the chaos and instability that ravish the country. With the use of glowing, beautiful prose, Coetzee examines K’s suffering through a dreamlike state where K somehow finds ways of escaping the violence in order to establish a quiet identity for himself. K’s quest for normalcy and solace embodies an entire generation’s hopes for peace.