J. M. Coetzee: Truth, Meaning, Fiction illuminates the intellectual and philosophical interests that drive Coetzee’s writing. In doing so, it makes the case for Coetzee as an important and original thinker in his own right. Whilst looking at Coetzee’s writing career, from his dissertation through to The Schooldays of Jesus (2016), and interpreting running themes and scenarios, style and evolving attitudes to literary form, Anthony Uhlmann also offers revealing glimpses, informed by archival research, of Coetzee’s writing process.

Among the main themes that Uhlmann sees in Coetzee’s writing, and which remains highly relevant today, is the awareness that there is truth in fiction, or that fiction can provide valuable insights into real world problems, and that there are also fictions of the truth: that we are surrounded, in our everyday lives, by stories we wish to believe are true. J. M. Coetzee: Truth, Meaning, Fiction offers a revealing new account of one of arguably our most important contemporary writers.