Youth (or Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II) (2002) is a semi-fictionalised autobiographical novel by J. M. Coetzee, recounting his struggles in 1960s London after fleeing the political unrest of Cape Town.
Plot summary
After graduating in mathematics and English, he moves in the hope of finding inspiration of becoming a poet and finding the woman of his dreams. However he finds none of this and instead, takes up a tedious job as a computer programmer. He feels alienated from the natives and never settles down, always aware of the scorn they see him with. He engages in a series of affairs, none of them fulfilling to him in the slightest. He scorns people's inabilities to see through his dull exterior into the 'flame' inside him; none of the women he meets evokes in him the passion that, accordingly to him, allows his artistry to flourish and thus produce great poetry.
External links
- Random House
- Review from the New York Times
- Youth: Anxiety in England, An analysis
- Review at Teen Ink
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| Novels: | Dusklands (1974) · In the Heart of the Country (1977) · Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) · Life & Times of Michael K (1983) · Foe (1986) · Age of Iron (1990) · The Master of Petersburg (1994) · Disgrace (1999) · Elizabeth Costello (2003) · Slow Man (2005) · Diary of a Bad Year (2007) |  |
| Memoirs: | Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) · Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002) | |
| Essay collections: | (1988) · (1992) · (1996) · The Lives of Animals (1999) · (2001) | |
