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Quote by J.M. Coetzee

“It’s that I no longer know where I am. I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living room, and they were to say, “Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? Polish-Jewish skin it’s made of, we find that’s best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.” And then I go to the bathroom and the soap wrapper says, “Treblinka – 100% human stereate.” Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this? Yet I’m not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into Norma’s, into the children’s, and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes to terms with it, why can't you? Why can't you?”

Quote by J.M. Coetzee

Work

Elizabeth Costello

The book presents a series of interconnected episodes in the life of Elizabeth Costello, a celebrated novelist from Australia. Through her travels to give lectures and participate in conferences, the narrative examines her evolving thoughts on topics such as animal rights, censorship, the nature of evil, and the limits of reason. The work blends fiction with philosophical inquiry, often blurring the line between the author's own views and those of her protagonist, and raises questions about the responsibilities of writers and the power of storytelling. more

Author

J.M. Coetzee

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