Reading Coetzee's Women

This is the first book to focus entirely on the under-researched but crucial topic of women in the work of J. M. Coetzee, generally regarded as one of the world’s most significant living writers. The fourteen essays in this collection raise the central issue of how Coetzee’s texts address the ‘woman question’. There is a focus on Coetzee’s representation of women, engagement with women writers and the ethics of what has been termed his ‘ventriloquism’ of women’s voices in his fiction and autobiographical writings, right up to his most recent novel, The Schooldays of Jesus. As such, this collection makes important links between the disciplines of literary and gender studies. It includes essays by well-known Coetzee scholars as well as by emerging scholars from around the world, providing fascinating and timely global insights into how his works are read from differing cultural and scholarly perspectives.

• Coetzee
• Women
• Gender
• Voice
• Narrator
• Male gaze
• Violence
• Feminism

• Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

  Sue Kossew, Melinda Harvey

 Melinda Harvey is Lecturer in Literary Studies at Monash University, Australia. She is co-editor of Katherine Mansfield and Literary Influence (2015), has written numerous essays on J. M. Coetzee’s writing, and is the current judge of the Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.

Sue Kossew is Chair of English and Literary Studies at Monash University, Australia. Her books include Pen and Power: A Post-Colonial Reading of J.M. Coetzee and André Brink (1996), Writing Woman, Writing Place: Australian and South African Fiction (2004) and Rethinking the Victim: Gender and Violence in Australian Women’s Writing (2019). Edited volumes include Critical Essays on J.M. Coetzee (1998) and Strong Opinions: J.M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction (2011).

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