Winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize, J.M. Coetzee writes fiction that is situated at the crucial intersection of postmodern literary experiment and the contemporary turn to ethics. Although politically engaged, Coetzee’s texts tend to resist supporting such easy antinomies as black and white or revolutionary and reactionary. Focusing principally on his novels but also addressing his autobiographical and critical writings, this seminar will take on such questions as who writes or speaks for the Other, translation, language and silence, postmodernity and contemporary South Africa, feminism in a South African frame, and the politics of literary revision or retelling.