24th out of 49 books
—
985 voters
Life and Times of Michael K
by
J.M. Coetzee
In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience -- the need for an int...more
Paperback, 192 pages
Published
March 28th 2005
by Vintage Books
(first published 1983)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
~ This review dedicated to 'Ya Boy.' I'ma sip this, you do the rest. ~
The Community of Misery
'Misery loves company.' I've always kind of really hated that expression because (rightly or not) I've usually deciphered the unsettling subtext whenever it's employed: i.e., that people -- experiencing misfortunes or enduring profound unhappiness -- prefer that others are likewise afflicted.
When I was younger, for instance, my father, a nouveau riche who absurdly prided himself on the mythologized 'p...more
The Community of Misery
'Misery loves company.' I've always kind of really hated that expression because (rightly or not) I've usually deciphered the unsettling subtext whenever it's employed: i.e., that people -- experiencing misfortunes or enduring profound unhappiness -- prefer that others are likewise afflicted.
When I was younger, for instance, my father, a nouveau riche who absurdly prided himself on the mythologized 'p...more
I have been thinking how much a good book is like an organic thing. When the proper level of alchemical transformation is reached between a skilled author at the top of his game and a reader with the proper level of receptivity and empathy then something new and wonderful is birthed. You are no longer dealing with some pulped paper glued together with some artful(or not) cover protecting its frail glyphs but you are in the presence of something larger, vaster and infinitely more sacred than just...more
Jan 18, 2009
Jessica
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
novel readers, social workers, gardeners
Recommended to Jessica by:
coterie of rabid coetzee maniacs who have infiltrated this site
Obviously there're a lot of people out there who write much better than I do, and in this way I feel writing's similar to distance running. I can run a passable marathon, though of course a lot of amateur runners out there run a much faster one. I'm impressed by people who run faster than I can, just as I am by those who write better than me. These people are humbling, but they're also inspiring: reading good writing or watching good running makes me want to write better and run faster. It's hea...more
***CONTAINS SPOILERS I.E. HIGHLY INSULTING REMARKS ABOUT THE LAST PART OF THE BOOK***
Uh oh. Last thing I want to do is fall out with my bookfacingoodreadinfingerlickin friends such as Donald and Jessica, both of whom think this is so good you have to invent a new word for it, good just isn't good enough, brilliant is almost an insult. So as you can tell, I didn't share those views. I was so gripped by this book, couldn't wait to get back and finish it today, and then i hit the Doctor's Tale (las...more
Uh oh. Last thing I want to do is fall out with my bookfacingoodreadinfingerlickin friends such as Donald and Jessica, both of whom think this is so good you have to invent a new word for it, good just isn't good enough, brilliant is almost an insult. So as you can tell, I didn't share those views. I was so gripped by this book, couldn't wait to get back and finish it today, and then i hit the Doctor's Tale (las...more
Life and Times of Michael K completely lives up to the hype and deserves every fucking award it has received. Both corporeally and allegorically it is as deep as they come; it isn’t just about the slow thinking Michael K. trying to survive; it is about inner strength, our perceptions of others, individuality in a world in which we are alone; it is about how we view meaning, and the depths one can reach through those meanings when they are extensions of one’s true self.
Coetzee amazed me....take a...more
Coetzee amazed me....take a...more
Huh.
The prose was detached and lifeless, as I have come to expect from Coetzee. Which leaves you cold and alone. In the rain, outside on the deserted street gazing at the lighted windows of the stalinesque apartment buildings across the road. And inside you there's this dull ache of hollowness that is where the prose would be if it was there. And because you are so empty there is a sort of lack that swells and swells until it fills you whole and spills over into your thoughts and your actions. A...more
The prose was detached and lifeless, as I have come to expect from Coetzee. Which leaves you cold and alone. In the rain, outside on the deserted street gazing at the lighted windows of the stalinesque apartment buildings across the road. And inside you there's this dull ache of hollowness that is where the prose would be if it was there. And because you are so empty there is a sort of lack that swells and swells until it fills you whole and spills over into your thoughts and your actions. A...more
Jul 03, 2011
Shovelmonkey1
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
everyone and 1001 book readers
Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by:
1001 book list
Normally when I write a review I like to be a bit sarcastic, or sometimes poke fun at the subject matter. This is not a book for sarcasm and I've had to set down my pointy mirth stick (the one I normally use for the poking of the fun).
Life and Times of Michael K is many thing
Poignant
Brief
Tragic
The writing has a sort of cold clarity, like a first breath of icy cold air on a winters morning which makes your lungs ache. Michael K is living in a war zone. He is an intelligent man who appreciates th...more
Life and Times of Michael K is many thing
Poignant
Brief
Tragic
The writing has a sort of cold clarity, like a first breath of icy cold air on a winters morning which makes your lungs ache. Michael K is living in a war zone. He is an intelligent man who appreciates th...more
"The damp weather was no good for her, nor was the unending worry about the future. Once settled in Prince Albert she would quickly recover her health. At most, they would be a day or two on the road. People were decent, people would stop and give them lifts."
This is one of those rare works of art that by showing ugliness gets the person paying attention to recognize, more deeply, beauty. I'm not sure how it happens, but while reading this book, this book about a war and about one man's physical...more
This is one of those rare works of art that by showing ugliness gets the person paying attention to recognize, more deeply, beauty. I'm not sure how it happens, but while reading this book, this book about a war and about one man's physical...more
May 05, 2013
Con McVeety
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
southern-hemisphere
Michael K wants no part of the Civil War taking place in South Africa, he works at a park in Cape Town, and takes care of his mother, expect that it rains all the time, everything is wet inside the house, Michael takes care of his mother in and lives in,rocks have been thrown through all the windows,so it's wet insdie. What are son and mother, who can't stand up on her weak legs, to do but leave and move out to the country away from the cold rain and strife of the city? This isn’t safe as they...more
Is There Joy in Utter Destitution?
Musings on The Life and Times of Michael K.
When I was thirteen, we moved out to a smallholding on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We still refer to it as “The Farm”, but only about a third of the land was arable, the rest was slate, covered with a thin crust of dust and scrub. There was a borehole and an orchard, a vegetable patch, chickens, three horses, two donkeys, a cow, and two pigs. There was also a family of nine – Wilson and Rebecca M. and their seven chi...more
Musings on The Life and Times of Michael K.
When I was thirteen, we moved out to a smallholding on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We still refer to it as “The Farm”, but only about a third of the land was arable, the rest was slate, covered with a thin crust of dust and scrub. There was a borehole and an orchard, a vegetable patch, chickens, three horses, two donkeys, a cow, and two pigs. There was also a family of nine – Wilson and Rebecca M. and their seven chi...more
Така, така... Явно Кутси не може да пише по друг начин освен силно, много силно, смилено, потресаващо, умопомрачително добре. Така само ограничава възможността ми аз да кажа нещо смислено и различно за книгите му. Но това си е мой проблем :)
Майкъл К. е роден със заешка устна. Според околните е леко бавноразвиващ се, но читателят остава с друго впечатление - човек, който не е част от системата, не мисли и не реагира като Цялото. А щом е така, значи нещо не е наред. Това предопределя различния жив...more
Майкъл К. е роден със заешка устна. Според околните е леко бавноразвиващ се, но читателят остава с друго впечатление - човек, който не е част от системата, не мисли и не реагира като Цялото. А щом е така, значи нещо не е наред. Това предопределя различния жив...more
Kafka, K, Michael K, Koetzee
In Kafka’s ‘The Castle’, K seeks admittance to the castle of the title. He is foiled. In fact, his failure was pre-determined and his travails against his fate pathetic and absurd, but oddly touching. Michael K, protagonist of ‘Life and Times of Michael K’ shares a congenital predetermination with his Kafkan namesake; he is born poor, black (although his skin colour is implied, never stated) and with a hare-lip which renders him unable to feed at his mother’s breast....more
In Kafka’s ‘The Castle’, K seeks admittance to the castle of the title. He is foiled. In fact, his failure was pre-determined and his travails against his fate pathetic and absurd, but oddly touching. Michael K, protagonist of ‘Life and Times of Michael K’ shares a congenital predetermination with his Kafkan namesake; he is born poor, black (although his skin colour is implied, never stated) and with a hare-lip which renders him unable to feed at his mother’s breast....more
Jul 05, 2009
El
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
1001-books-list,
late20th-centurylit
In the first part of this book we meet Michael K, born with a harelip and living in Cape Town, South Africa. As an adult his mother falls sick and he is struck by the realization the only way to save her is to bring her to her homeland not involved in the civil war of his own town. What happens on their journey change the direction of Michael K's life and he is forced to depend upon himself in order to survive.
This is a testament to human nature, what a strong spirit can do for one person and th...more
This is a testament to human nature, what a strong spirit can do for one person and th...more
Unconventional, radically unconventional. I have read books on non-descript people. K is so non-descript that you would find an ant-hill more exciting. Yet his utter lack of 'will to power' (to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche) is poignant. It shakes the earth below your feet. His passiveness yells out a shrill "Just let me be. I exist in my oblivion, in my non-existence." In his passiveness K recognizes no human boundary, no barbed wires, no affront, no sympathy. No book glorifies freedom like th...more
This was the first book I read by Coetzee and I wanted an introduction to his style before I tackled the great Barbarians, about which the literary world sings paeans of glory. When I finished this book, I went back to read the comments left by others because I believed that I must have picked up the wrong book. With only a handful of exceptions, the reviews I read seemed to indicate a brilliance I cannot locate.
That this books is evocative of the bleak and pointless existence of some people in...more
That this books is evocative of the bleak and pointless existence of some people in...more
Literary historians credit much of Ireland's rich literary tradition to its often tragic history. No surprise then that the nation of South Africa, likewise so rich in grief that it might as well diamonds, has produced so many extraordinary writers, two of whom, Coetzee included, who can boast a Nobel Prize. Which brings us to one of his many fine novels, the Life and Times of Michael K.
Telling the tale of a black man caught in the twisted and violent web of Apartheid might appear at first an o...more
Telling the tale of a black man caught in the twisted and violent web of Apartheid might appear at first an o...more
So disappointed was I with the second half of his two volume memoir, Youth, that not long after he won the Nobel, I left Coetzee sitting over the dim blue lotus of my literary backburner. Five years later, with a taste for the grim joys of some Kafka or Beckett but needing light respite from the labyrinthic bales of Gaddis’s Byzantine sentence; I picked up this slim volume and grazed through it for a couple afternoons. I chose wisely: anyone having savored Beckett or Kafka will see at every turn...more
The more I think of this book, the more I love it. It is a mere 185 pages but is packed with enduring images of a man who only asks to be allowed to be himself. Michael K is a simple man of modest means but his life is so much more than those words would suggest. I would recommend this book highly.
I read Disgrace a long time ago and enjoyed it thoroughly, but not as much as Michael K (I think I was both too young and read it on a beach, so it could certainly use a revisit). In reading Coetzee's prose this time, I was struck by his economy of language. His sentences are like coiled springs; short declarative statements that seem to convey so much emotion despite being, on their face, relatively ambivalent to bleak existence they are describing. I found myself dogearing pages, highlighting...more
Aug 06, 2011
Matthew
added it
More difficult than Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and yet simultaneously somehow more quotidian, the story of a simple gardener, Michael K., mirrors the structure of Camus' The Stranger and the imagery of Kafka's The Hunger Artist. Michael, often referred to simply as "K." calling to mind Kafka's characters in The Trial and The Castle, is a stand-in for any oppressed minority, but here is specifically a black man in South Africa toward the end of the apartheid regime. Althogh race is neve...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
It's hard to say anything bad about a Booker-prize winner like J.M. Coetzee. And in fact, I have nothing bad to say about this book. I read it many years ago and it remains one of my all-time favourite books. It takes place in S. Africa during the civil war. K, the protagonist is a slow-witted 31-year-old man who was born with a hare-lip, never corrected. He leads a very soliatry life and "because of his face K. did not have women friends." But he had a mother, a very sick one at that. Toward th...more
The Time is 1940's were south Africa is hit by civil war unending and undeclared, people are affected by it deeply and engrossingly but that is not the storyline of the novel..Its is about Michael K , his hare lip set him apart from the crowd..His lip shaped like a snail's foot hurdles his speech with disorientation and flimsy pronunciation..Born to Anna K who works as a servant in Cape town, he is raised in state institution, home for handicapped children...His communication with the world and...more
The reviews for this book are prolix and literary and impassioned. This seems natural because the book is disturbing (in the sense of challenging many comfortable and normal valuations of life) and it is cerebral and steeped in literary allusions and tradition, not to mention that Coetzee's readers are of a certain intellectual sensibility.
It's a tough book to understand, that is, it's tough to understand the life and times of Michael K, likewise tough for Michael K and the "normal, smart, sens...more
It's a tough book to understand, that is, it's tough to understand the life and times of Michael K, likewise tough for Michael K and the "normal, smart, sens...more
Jun 12, 2012
deliciouslyfictitious
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
word buffs, clever types
Read my full review and others like it at www.deliciouslyfictitious.com.
I have to be honest. I didn’t love this book. (I actually gave it 3.5 stars, but GoodReads doesn't seem to allow half-star ratings...)
It is a seminal work. It won Coetzee the Booker Prize in 1983 (his first win of two). No doubt it also had something to do with his Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
It is clearly the work of a superior writer and a superior mind. You can see it in the opening description of Michael K, sittin...more
I have to be honest. I didn’t love this book. (I actually gave it 3.5 stars, but GoodReads doesn't seem to allow half-star ratings...)
It is a seminal work. It won Coetzee the Booker Prize in 1983 (his first win of two). No doubt it also had something to do with his Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
It is clearly the work of a superior writer and a superior mind. You can see it in the opening description of Michael K, sittin...more
'Though this is a large country, so large that you would think there would be space for everyone, what I have learned of life tells me that it is hard to keep out of the camps. Yet I am convinced there are areas that lie between the camps and belong to no camp, not even to the catchment areas of the camps... I am not so foolish, however, as to imagine that I can rely on maps and roads to guide me. That's why I've chosen you to show me the way.'
The above section sees the themes of this novel seve...more
The above section sees the themes of this novel seve...more
Ik las Life and times of Michael K. van Coetzee (in het Nederlands want mijn biebje is niet zo ruim gesorteerd).
Het verhaal: Michael K is een sociaal zwakke man, hij werkt als hovenier voor de gemeente. Zijn meest opvallende 'eigenschap' is zijn hazelip. Als zijn moeder ziek wordt en daardoor niet meer kan werken, en bovendien de burgeroorlog in hun stad (Seepunt wordt genoemd, is dat een stadsdeel?), vluchten ze naar het platteland waar zij vandaan is gekomen, allerlei controlposten ontwijkend....more
Het verhaal: Michael K is een sociaal zwakke man, hij werkt als hovenier voor de gemeente. Zijn meest opvallende 'eigenschap' is zijn hazelip. Als zijn moeder ziek wordt en daardoor niet meer kan werken, en bovendien de burgeroorlog in hun stad (Seepunt wordt genoemd, is dat een stadsdeel?), vluchten ze naar het platteland waar zij vandaan is gekomen, allerlei controlposten ontwijkend....more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
The elementary tension between the orders of the 'symbolic' and the 'real' is the foundation which supports Coetzee's narrative imagination. Simplified, the 'symbolic' is the realm of language, which at the same time grounds and destroys our lifeworld. Words are elementary particles that coalesce in ideologies. These ideologies lead to partisanship, conflict and ultimately war. The book's protagonist, Michael K., is someone who is committed to leave behind the realm of the symbolic. He drops out...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hội Thích Đọc Sách: Cuộc đời và thời đại của Michael K | 16 | 52 | May 17, 2013 08:59am | |
| Great African Reads: "Life and Time of Michael K." by J.M Coetzee | 11 | 34 | Jan 26, 2010 05:46pm |
John Maxwell Coetzee is an author and academic from South Africa. He is now an Australian citizen and lives in South Australia.
A novelist and literary critic as well as a translator, Coetzee has won the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.
More about J.M. Coetzee...
A novelist and literary critic as well as a translator, Coetzee has won the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Share This Book
3 trivia questions
More quizzes & trivia...
“He even knew the reason why: because enough men had gone off to war saying the time for gardening was when the war was over; whereas there must be men to stay behind and keep gardening alive, or at least the idea of gardening; because once that cord was broken, the earth would grow hard and forget her children. That was why.”
—
4 people liked it
“He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything, as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust”
—
3 people liked it
More quotes…

Loading...









































Feb 14, 2010 04:28am
Dec 16, 2010 01:13pm