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Sat 10 Oct 2008PAPERBACKS
Diary of a Bad YearBy JM Coetzee Vintage, £7.99 JM Coetzee and Francis Bacon, although born 400 years apart, are cut from similar cloth. Both write essays, are didactic, thoughtful, serious, pragmatic, of a philosophical hue and interested in the paradox of authority in fiction. Remember, Bacon's famous Of Studies, on the value of learning?
In this novel, Coetzee parallels his faux-romantic, parable-plot with essay titles prefixed with "on" - On Anarchism, On Terrorism, On the Erotic Life, On Apology, and many more. But his suppressed anger is reserved for the "so-called war on terror". He sees Osama bin Laden as a gift to the right-wing governments of the US and Australia.
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