Cirrus@Austlit

'The adjectives often used to describe J.M. Coetzee’s fiction – sparse, taut, stark, lean – have become so familiar to readers and critics as to border on cliché. Less frequent are critical discussions that parse out the linguistic and rhetorical manoeuvres Coetzee uses to hone such economical yet affecting prose. Jarad Zimbler’s analysis attempts to place Coetzee’s style within a broader South African literary context, while also encouraging the field of postcolonial studies to embrace stylistic analysis as a way to move beyond cultural critique and inspire a “re-orientation of postcolonial criticism towards questions of literary technique” (24).' (Introduction)