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Slow Man

J. M. Coetzee

2005240 pagesabout 4–6 hours
2005
first published
  • 2005Putnam · 240 pages · ENGISBN 9780670034598
  • 2005Secker & Warburg · 265 pages · ENGISBN 9780436206115
  • 2005RB Large Print · 315 pages · ENGISBN 9781419375972
  • 2006PenguinISBN 9780099498087
  • 2007FISCHER TaschenbuchISBN 9783596170654
  • 2006Vintage Books · 240 pages · ENGISBN 9780099490623
  • 2005Fischer S. Verlag GmbHISBN 9783100108333
  • 2006Penguin (Non-Classics) · 264 pages · ENGISBN 9780143037897

A masterful new novel from one of the greatest writers alive. Paul Rayment is on the threshold of a comfortable old age when a calamitous cycling accident results in the amputation of a leg. Humiliated, his body truncated, his life circumscribed, he turns away from his friends. He hires a nurse named Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: hers in Croatia, his in France. Tactfully and efficiently she ministers to his needs. But his feelings for her, and for her handsome teenage son, are complicated by the sudden arrival on his doorstep of the celebrated Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello, who threatens to take over the direction of his life and the affairs of his heart. Unflinching in its vision of suffering and generous in its portrayal of the spirit of care, Slow Man is a masterful work of fiction by one of the world’s greatest writers.

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