Reading from a blank book, by Hernan Bas. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York City
Discussed in this essay:
The Childhood of Jesus, by J. M. Coetzee. Penguin Books. 288 pages. $16.
The Schooldays of Jesus, by J. M. Coetzee. Penguin Books. 272 pages. $16.
The Death of Jesus, by J. M. Coetzee. Viking. 208 pages. $27.
The novels of J. M. Coetzee’s Jesus trilogy take place in a purer world than our own and, on the surface, a simpler one. In this world, which might be an afterlife or a waystation in the transmigration of souls, no one, except newborns, is native, and everyone speaks the same language, “beginner’s Spanish.” Arrivals…
