The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
J.M. Coetzee's post-millennial writing has been marked by new forms of inventiveness, formal risk-taking and narrative experimentation that have blurred the boundaries between fiction, autobiography and social commentary. Using the example of the novel Diary of a Bad Year (2007), it is argued that this latter fiction is exemplary of Edward Said's idea of "late style", accounting not only for Coetzee's surprising venture into explicit political commentary, but also his narrative minimalism. The paper looks carefully at the content and style of Coetzee's novel, contrasting its descriptive technique with earlier fictions.
