Narratives of Disability and Illness in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee
By (Author) Pawe Wojtas
Edinburgh University Press
Edinburgh University Press
10th March 2026
United Kingdom
Non Fiction
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
Literary studies: postcolonial literature
Paperback
320
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
This study offers a detailed analysis of the fiction of J. M. Coetzee, including the novels of the South African and Australian periods, to demonstrate the development of Coetzee's engagement with the complexities of non-normative embodiment. In this illuminating monograph, Pawe Wojtas demonstrates the extent to which Coetzee's multifaceted depictions of disability offer a sustained critique of the ableist implications of political violence and neoliberal inclusionism alike. Exploring a wide range of notions, such as ocularnormativism, mute speech, eco-disability, disability Gothic, dismodernism, autogerontography, and bibliotherapy, Wojtas shows how Coetzee's 'disabled textuality' provokes a sustained meditation on various forms of cultural denigration of disability experience.