JM Coetzee - Five Books for Critics

13th November 2007

Nobel Prize winner, J.M. Coetzee, gave the National Book Critics Circle a list of five books he believes reviewers should have in their libraries.

The Iliad. - the standard for the narrative of action.

Aristotle, Poetics. - the terms for all later debate on the truth claims of history versus the truth claims of poetry.

Cervantes, Don Quixote. - source-book for all writers of fiction.

Rousseau, Confessions. - reminds us how hard it is to tell the truth.

Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov. - shows us what the novel of ideas can achieve.

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One Reply

  1. john baker

    Nov 13th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    Doris Lessing’s five books were quite different:
    The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
    Anna Karenin, by Leo Tolstoy
    Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding
    Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust
    Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

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