'What is love? It’s a question we’ve struggled with since Eve, Adam, the asp and the apple. It has inspired a billion songs. The one that comes to mind as I think of J. M. Coetzee’s The Pole and Other Stories is the 1939 jazz standard “Comes Love (Nothing Can Be Done)”: “Don’t try hiding cause there isn’t any use / You’ll start sliding when your heart turns on the juice”.' (Introduction)