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.

Author Biography

J.M. Coetzee's work includes DUSKLANDS In the heart of the country, WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, which was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the CNA Prize, LIFE AND TIMES OF MICHAEL K, which won the Booker Prize and the Prix Etranger Femina, FOE, AGE OF IRON, which won the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, THE MASTER OF PETERSBURG, which won the Irish Times International Fiction Award and the memoirs BOYHOOD and YOUTH: Scenes from Provincial Life. His novel, DISGRACE, won the Booker Prize, making him the first author to have won this prestigious prize twice. His more recent novels include ELIZABETH COSTELLO, DIARY OF A BAD YEAR and SLOW MAN. SUMMERTIME has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for South-East Asia and the Pacific, and the Adelaide Festival Literature Award. It won the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards in 2009.