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Life and Times of Michael K

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Life and Times of Michael K

By: J.M. Coetzee
Narrated by: Jack Klaff
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About this listen

 In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience - the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision. Contemporary Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

A strong and memorable novel
It strikes deep inside the heart...The story is clean, clear, straight, the work of a mature imagination at full power...here is a book that will be celebrated for a long time
This is a trule astonishing novel... I finished Life & Times of Michael K in a state of elation, for all the misery and suffering it contains. I cannot recommend it highly enough
Beautifully written in a strong, plain, unpretentious style...distinguished by grim humour and powerful understatement
The quality of Coetzee's writing lies in his inner vision: dark, passionately compassionate, concerned with the nature of man
All stars
Most relevant
Too often stories are told of people of great importance and the Michael Kay's of the world go untold, worse we are for it.

a wonderful story

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The Life and Times of Michael K is an ordinary story about an ordinary man written in an ordinary manner, that somehow coalesces in an offering of gentle, sad, ordinary beauty. It aches of a fractal life of millions the world over, and gradually leverages confrontation of our own place in it.

Perfectly Ordinary

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.