The Pole and Other Stories

The novella and five short fictions in JM Coetzee’s new book The Pole and Other Stories portray characters in the winter of their lives. The South African-born Nobel laureate, who has lived in Australia for two decades, is himself now 83 years old, and has for some time displayed self-consciousness about his age, even titling his last collection of criticism Late Essays: 2006-2017.