Age of Iron
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Age of Iron is a 1990 novel by South African Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee. It is among his most popular works.
The novel depicts the agony of Mrs. Curren, a classically educated white woman. She lives in the Cape Town of the apartheid era, where she is slowly dying of cancer. Against a backdrop of violence by whites and blacks alike, Mrs. Curren remembers her past and her daughter, who left South Africa because of the situation in the country: the book is framed as an extended letter from the mother to her distant offspring. As the story progresses, she constructs a relationship of a different kind with Vercueil, an old homeless man who happens upon her home.
Coetzee brings together important themes in this book: the drama of a tragic end of life, the separation of mother and daughter, a strange friendship between diametrically opposed people, and the metaphor of decay from within — atop which is painted a picture of social and political tragedy unfolding in an undeveloped country.
| John Maxwell Coetzee |
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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) |
| Essays |
| White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (1988) • Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992) • Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996) • The Lives of Animals (1999) • Stranger Shores: Literary Essays, 1986–1999 (2001) |
| Autobiographical works |
| Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) • Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002) |
