'In the final "lesson" of Coetzee's 2003 novel, Elizabeth Costello, the title character is faced with a courtroom straight out of Kafka. She must here confront her identity as a writer and provide what is ultimately a performance of belief. My discussion uses Kafka's precedent story "Before the Law" and Derrida's essay of the same name to enquire into what, for Coetzee, are the questions surrounding the author on the stand about the difference between the event or practice of literature and the Law of literature. And further: how does an author reconcile of embody both timelessness and transience when the pen hits the page? Coetzee has created a specific character with strangely universal motives; the discussion addresses the kinds of divides this engenders on the page and in the reader.' ( Source: Elizabeth MacFarlane)
