Editions and translations have been updated for Slow Man by Eilish Copelin as part of a Semester 2, 2013 scholar's internship. The selection and inclusion of these editions and translations was based on their availability through Australian libraries, namely through the search facilities of Libraries Australia and Trove (National Library of Australia).
Given the international popularity of Coetzee's work, however, this record is not yet comprehensive. Editions and translations not widely available in Australia may not have been indexed. Furthermore, due to the enormous breadth of critical material on Coetzee's work, indexing of secondary sources is also not complete.
Writing Disability in Australia:
| Type of disability | Amputated leg. |
| Type of character | Primary. |
| Point of view | Third person. |
'J.M. Coetzee is best known for winning the Nobel Prize for literature on the basis of writing about his South African homeland. He is also famous for his literary configuring of ethics in relation to human-animal relationships. Coetzee is now an Australian citizen. This chapter provides a reading of the international travels of author, implied author, character and text, with a central interest in the relation between appropriation and negotiations of a transnational identity. Australian woman Elizabeth Costello (lecturing abroad on animal rights) reappears in the regional space of Adelaide, making Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man and subsequent books textual spaces in which Coetzee wrestles with the enigmas of migration, the gaps in history and the ‘masquerade’ that is appropriation of ‘other’ identities. The chapter arises from transnational knowledge transfers, its authors being part of the growth of Australian Studies in India and beyond.'
Source: Abstract.
'This chapter discusses the gerontological implications of amputation and their influence on self-understanding in J.M. Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005). It considers the ways in which Paul Rayment’s response to the amputation of his leg following a cycling accident highlights the complex entanglements of age, masculinity, and the need for human connection. The chapter argues that Paul’s surgery effectively inaugurates his senescence, thereby casting him suddenly and irrevocably into the margins of Australian society. Emotionally unstrung and keenly aware of his mortality, Paul increasingly associates the loss of his leg with the loss of opportunities to establish a legacy. Ultimately, Coetzee’s novel shows how the acceptance of an altered body can enable the individual to come to terms with broader existential concerns.'
Source: Abstract.
