The Schooldays of Jesus

JM Coetzee author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:7th Jan '21

Should be back in stock very soon

The Schooldays of Jesus cover

From the double Booker Prize-winning author of Disgrace, an astonishing novel of new beginnings and the troubles of youth.

'Brilliant... Tenaciously absorbing' Daily Telegraph


David is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new town, Estrella. He is learning the language, he has begun to make friends and he has the big dog Bolívar to watch over him.

But he'll be seven soon and he should be at school. And so, David is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. It's here, in his new golden dancing slippers, that he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. Yet it's here too that he will make troubling discoveries about what adults are capable of.

The Schooldays of Jesus is a mesmerising tale about growing up, and about the choices we are forced to make in our lives.

'Compelling, often very funny, full of sudden depths' Observer

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2016

Compelling, often very funny, full of sudden depths * Observer *
Brilliant...tenaciously absorbing * Daily Telegraph *
It is written with the coolness and limpidity that makes Coetzee a master... There were moments where I found it almost too affecting to read -- David Sexton * Evening Standard *
It’s compulsively enigmatic but surprisingly funny too. * Metro *
Coetzee doesn't want to be understood, or explained. He wants, merely, to be read. The Schooldays of Jesus is, indeed, very readable * The Times *

  • Long-listed for Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2016 (UK)

ISBN: 9781529112689

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 17mm

Weight: 219g

272 pages