'In December 2012, J.M. Coetzee published an article on Gerald Murnane in the New York Review of Books. Coetzee has long written for the NYRB and many of these essays have been collected and republished in Stranger Shores: Literary Essays, 1986-1999 (2001) and Inner Workings: Literary Essays, 2000-2005 (2007). This republication in itself demonstrates that the essays are not only occasional pieces, but contain insights of sufficient importance to Coetzee to justify their preservation. Their relevance to Coetzee’s fiction is apparent: his review of Joseph Frank’s biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, for example, appeared soon after he published a novel concerned with Dostoevsky, The Master of Petersburg (1994).' (Introduction)
