Me doy cuenta que no habría estado mal leerse el Robinson Crusoe de Daniel Defoe antes de emprender esta lectura, más que nada por el hecho de captar los detalles en las distinciones, réplicas y diferentes matices que ofrece esta relectura del clásico inglés. Aún y así, desde luego, como casi cualquier aficionado a la literatura, conozco a grandes rasgos la Historia, lo bastante como para comprender que lo que Coetzee percibe en el fondo de esa historia es una visión acerca de la libertad y de ahí edifica su propia visión, contrastando los puntos de vista de diferentes personajes, incluyendo a la aparición estelar del propio Daniel Defoe.

Porque un náufrago que se queda varado en una isla efectivamente está libre de las leyes de cualquier estado, rige su propio destino dentro de las limitaciones del lugar. En el caso de este Cruso de Coetzee el hombre se dedica a edificar unas terrazas en el suelo de la isla por si algún día se puede plantar algo, porque él no puede, dado que en esa isla no hay vegetación ni semillas disponibles. Como se ve, ese gesto absurdo es una manifestación incontestable de libertad. Pero, ¿de qué sirve aparte de mero pasatiempo para mantener la cabeza ocupada y el cuerpo en funcionamiento?

Aquí el personaje principal es Susan Barton, una inglesa que recaló en Brasil, en la ciudad de Bahía, en busca de su hija desaparecida. Por azares acaba en una nave portuguesa, dónde es abusada y al final la tripulación se rebela contra el capitán y los arrojan por la borda, carambola por la que Susan acaba en la isla de Cruso y, mientras de describe con detalles los avatares y las características de la rutina diaria en la isla, también se desarrolla la tirante relación entre Cruso, Susan y Viernes, el esclavo que está al servicio de Cruso.

Con el desarrollo del argumento, y tras giros notorios, la narración también se desvía y observa la cuestión de la narración, lo que es otro ángulo sobre el que observar la cuestión de la libertad, pues Daniel Defoe tiene una opinión acerca de cómo debería contarse la historia de Susan Barton y ella, por contra, tiene otra distinta, pues así lo ha decidido ella. Ni qué decir tiene que, tomando derroteros más posmodernos, también hay no pocas reflexiones acerca de la libertad de los personajes y de los límites de la escritura, de su compromiso con la verdad y el choque se que produce con el interés del público y su ánimo de entretenimiento (a caso otra metáfora o paralelismo respecto a las terrazas que construye Cruso en la isla).

Todo ello va unido a una inmersión muy detallada en la Inglaterra del siglo XVIII, pues Coetzee no sólo demuestra conocimiento de la biografía de Defoe, también se su época, de forma que aborda problemas legales, morales, de costumbres y más aspectos con solvencia y aplomo, lo cual, en general, sin duda le da sabor a toda esa serie de disquisiciones y discusiones, que hacia el final de la novela ocupan un lugar primordial. No hemos de olvidar que estamos frente a una novela intelectual, no ante una novela de aventuras al uso. Como es habitual en el escritor sudafricano, sus intereses se ubican más en el terreno de la filosofía y la estética, sin que por ello se olvide de ofrecer un razonable entretenimiento al lector. Valga también comentar que, en comparación con su obra más tardía, aquí su prosa no es quizás tan sucinta y condensada, sin embargo se nota el relieve de su lenguaje y en poco más de 150 páginas abarca muchas más cuestiones y aspectos que otras novelas de 600. Por eso se nota que Foe está escrita por una mano magistral.

También tengo en mis manos otra revisión del clásico de Robinson Crusoe, la escribió el genial escritor francés Michel Tournier, si bien ahora me parece ineludible leer primero la novela clásica para poder absorber mejor su jugo.

Por lo demás, aunque no es mi novela favorita de Coetzee, quizás si que la incluiría entre las cinco mejores.

Foe, J.M. Coetzee

Foe is a 1986 novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee. Woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe, Foe is written from the perspective of Susan Barton, a castaway who landed on the same island inhabited by "Cruso" and Friday as their adventures were already underway.

Like Robinson Crusoe, it is a frame story, unfolded as Barton's narrative while in England attempting to convince the writer Daniel Foe to help transform her tale into popular fiction. Focused primarily on themes of language and power, the novel was the subject of criticism in South Africa, where it was regarded as politically irrelevant on its release. Coetzee revisited the composition of Robinson Crusoe in 2003 in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Susan Barton is on a quest to find her kidnapped daughter whom she knows has been taken to the New World. She is set adrift during a mutiny on a ship to Lisbon.

When she comes ashore, she finds Friday and Cruso who has grown complacent, content to forget his past and live his life on the island with Friday—tongueless by what Cruso claims to have been the act of former slave owners—in attendance. Arriving near the end of their residence, Barton is only on the island for a year before the trio is rescued, but the homesick Cruso does not survive the voyage to England. In England with Friday, Barton attempts to set her adventures on the island to paper, but she feels her efforts lack popular appeal.

She tries to convince novelist Daniel Foe to help with her manuscript, but he does not agree on which of her adventures is interesting. Foe would prefer to set her story of the island as one episode of a, more formulaic, story of a mother looking for her lost daughter, and when he does write on the story she wishes, fabulates about Cruso's adventures rather than relating her facts. Frustrating Barton's efforts further, Foe, who becomes her lover, is preoccupied with debt and has little time or energy to write about anything. Barton's story takes a twist with the return of someone claiming to be her missing daughter.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «آقای فو»؛ «دشمن»؛ نویسنده: جان مکسول کوتسی؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و نهم ماه ژانویه سال2012میلادی

عنوان: آقای فو؛ نویسنده: جان مکسول کوتسی؛ مترجم: الناز ایمانی؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، سال1390، در151ص؛ شابک9789640013908؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان افریقایی جنوبی تبار استرالیا - سده 20م

کتاب نخستین بار با عنوان: «دشمن» و با ترجمه جناب ونداد جلیلی در سال1389، در158ص، انتشارات نشر چشمه، با شابک9789643629762؛ منتشر شده است

سوزان بارتون زنی است، که در اقیانوس سرگردان شده؛ به جزیره ای میرسد، که «رابینسون کروزوئه»، و غلامش «فرای دی (جمعه)»، در آنجا زندگی میکنند؛ «سوزان»، از این جزیره، به همراه «فرای دی» نجات مییابد، و سعی میکند، به یاری نویسنده ای به نام «آقای فو»، از ماجراهای آن جزیره سخن بگوید؛

این رمان، ابزاری بوده، تا نویسنده ی داستان «جی.ام کوتسی»،‌ اعتراض خود بر آپارتاید حاکم بر کشور خویش «آفریقای جنوبی» را، ابراز دارند، و ادبیات نیز کالبدی تا به وسیله آن، بتواند تندی خشم خویش را بزداید، و آن را به گوش استعمارگران برساند؛ داستان «کروزوئه»، اينبار از زبان یک زن، بازگو می‌شود؛ زنی که زندگی در جزیره، او را وادار می‌سازد، تا بار داستان را نیز بر دوش بگيرد؛ مسئولیتی را، که «کروزوئه»، زیر بار آن نمی‌رود، و قادر به انجام آن نیست؛ «جان مکسول کوتسی»، رمان‌نويس و منتقد، زاده شده در «آفریقای جنوبی»، برای رمان‌های خویش، که بیانگر تأثیرات استعمار، بر جوامع بودند؛ مورد توجه قرار گرفتند، و در سال2003میلادی «جایزه نوبل ادبیات» را از آن خود کردند؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 15/11/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 03/10/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

In Foe, Susan Barton is set adrift in a rowboat after a mutiny on a ship sailing from South America to Lisbon. She lands on an island where Cruso and Friday had been cast away years ago. In Coetzee's retelling of the Robinson Crusoe tale, Cruso is content with his simple life on the island. Friday has been transformed from a Caribbean to a black African whose tongue had been cut out by slave owners. The three castaways are rescued after Susan has spent one year on the island, but Cruso dies on his way back to Europe.

Susan wants to write their story so she contacts the author Daniel Foe to turn her narration into a book. But Foe wants to tell a different story about Susan than the one she thinks is important. Susan is also disturbed about Friday's lack of a voice. Although Friday has been liberated from slavery, he cannot ever really be free with no voice. The theme seems to be that the oppressed and disadvantaged have been silenced, and lost the authorship of their own stories.

J.M. Coetzee was writing in 1986 in South Africa where communication problems and cultural differences existed between the black Africans and white colonialists. The original Crusoe story was a fictional autobiography and adventure story with 17th Century ideas about colonialism, gender, and slavery. Coetzee has updated the tale by adding a woman narrator, an African servant, and a 20th Century outlook.

„Fo“ je jedna od meni najdražih Kucijevih knjiga, i najdražih knjiga uopšte. Čitalac koji se po prvi put sreće sa delom velikog maga, može u njoj pronaći iscrtanu mapu, ili šifrarnik za prepoznavanje velikog broja tema kojima će se ovaj autor baviti u svem svom stvaralaštvu. Ono što je tu meni najvažnije, i gde se Kuci kao pisac/mislilac i ja kao čitalac/zbunjenik/nepomirenik-sa-nepoznanicama najviše dodirujemo jeste problem bezglasnosti, odnosno važnosti glasa koji neko nema (recimo, bezglasne životinje), ili mu je nasilno oduzet (na rasnoj ili rodnoj osnovi), ili se pravimo da ne postoji glas koji bi se možda mogao razumeti. Kuci dolazi iz južnoafričkog podneblja što nužno nameće propitivanje odnosa između crnaca i belaca. On je belac, no njegova propitavanja ne daju jednostavne i očekivane odgovore (što ga beskrajno uzdiže u mojim očima), jer jednostavni odgovori na komplikovana pitanja uvek znače rezove, bolne i diskriminišuće. Ono što je njegova možda osnovna „misija“ (iako sam sigurna da on sam ne bi pristao da mu se prišiva postojanje neke misije) upravo je davanje glasa svim subjektima određenih odnosa, ili slikanje situacija u kojima bezglasna bića ostaju zarobljena i zaboravljena, unižena, silovana, kremirana, zlostavljana, nasilno obezjezičena, ili se ono što imaju da kažu izvrće iz raznih razloga tako što se u komunikaciju umeša određeni posrednik.
Knjiga „Fo“ (neobičnog imena, no – rastumačićemo ga tokom pažljivog čitanja) kao osnovu uzima poznatu radnju: brodolom, no ovoga puta ne samo brodolom muškarca, Krusoa, već i žene (naknadno pristigle saputnice, koja je tu možda samo da pravi dodatnu zbrku, ili ipak zato što je potrebno i njoj podariti glas). Pošto već od prvog pasusa primećujemo navodnike, jasno je da narator ove priče nekome (ne čitaocu, već nekom posredniku) priča ili ispisuje svoju pustolovinu. Narator(ka) je Suzan Barton, junakinja jednog drugog Defoovog romana, koja se Kucijevom majstorijom povezuje sa mnogo poznatijom Robinsonovom pustolovinom. Ona je bila na brodu nakon neuspele potrage za ćerkom u Brazilu, odakle se otisnula sa sumnjivom posadom i završila, posle pobune, u čamcu sa svojim mrtvim ljubavnikom – kapetanom broda. Odustavši od veslanja, kliznula je u more i plivajući, potpomognuta talasima, stigla do ostrva.
Ono što opisuje kao život na ostrvu razlikuje se u velikoj meri od opisa koji nam je dao Defo. Svi smo voleli Robinsona – ali, je li ta avantura verodostojna? To je jedno od pitanja koje Kuci nenametljivo postavlja, a može biti ključno za razumevanje ove knjige. Suzan Barton zatiče mrzovoljnog starca koji ne piše dnevnik, koji provodi vreme praveći terase pogodne da se jednog dana na njima zaseje neko seme, samo što semena nema a pitanje je i da li će ikad iko sa semenom doći na njegovo ostrvo. Ipak, njegov trud možda nije ništa besmisleniji od bilo koje druge ljudske aktivnosti (pogotovo ako se svaki ljudski život shvati kao ostrvo, što bi obezvredilo sva naša nastojanja, a još više ako se svaki život shvati kao mogućnost da se ostrva povežu i da se nekom nešto ostavi i nakon smrti). Sa njim je i Petko, njegov sluga, poslušni crnac koji ne govori, jer mu je, avaj, odsečen jezik. (Suzan nikad ne saznaje ko je to učinio, trgovci robljem ili...?) Robinson odbija bilo kakvu mogućnost da osavremeni išta dok živi na ostrvu, tako da oštro odgovara na sva pitanja junakinje (ona ovde može biti shvaćena čak i kao neka vrsta Eve, pa bi i njena nagovaranja da preduzmu nešto mogla biti svojevrsna želja da se ubere plod sa drveta saznanja). Naravno, Robinson, kao muškarac i belac – gospodar je i tog ostrva i njegovih stanovnika: crnca i žene.
On, ipak, nije zdrav, i tokom jednog od nastupa njegove bolesti – iznenada dolazi spasilački brod. Robinson umire na putu ka Engleskoj, dok žena i crnac ostaju prepušteni sebi. Sebi i još nekom: piscu.
Suzan Barton pokušava da ispriča (i proda!) svoju pustolovinu izvesnom Fou (to je, možda Danijel De Fo, pisan namerno tako da ovo Fo bude odvojeno, i da nas podseća na pitanje „Friend or foe?“). Njemu se čini da tu pustolovinu treba malo nafilovati. Čini mu se da njena istina nije toliko važna (kao istina priče, istina teksta, umetnička istina – ili možda samo kao zanimljivost koja se može bolje prodati?). U tom rascepu nastaju najvažnije diskusije koje Kuci pokreće ovim nevelikim romanom. U delovima teksta koje Suzan Barton nevešto ispisuje trudeći se da ih nekako prosledi piscu nalazi se njen stvarni život (da li?) ili bar ono što ona smatra istinom svog života. Je li pisac prijatelj ili neprijatelj ako njenu priču koristi kao objekat da bi izmislio neku drugu? Ko je tu stvaran, a ko nestvaran? Ne samo da ono što je njoj važno pretvara u manje važnu epizodu jedne šire priče o kojoj ona ne želi da govori, već joj pridružuje lažnu ćerku i njenu dadilju (stvarajući tako konfuziju iz koje nam postaje nejasno ko je živ a ko lik u priči, nisu li sve te žene samo figurice u njegovoj igri). Za sve to vreme, Petko je uz njih kao izvestan teret (ili su ONI NJEMU teret), bez jezika, nalazeći svoje načine da izrazi određene emocije, ili da se igra, da sprovodi svoje rituale, i da pokazuje da je ne samo ljudsko biće, nego da ono što on ima da kaže čeka da bude rečeno, makar ispod površine, među olupinama, među mrtvim robovima i morskim travama, zajedno sa krakenom – svojevsnim „pupkom sveta“ koji negde u dubini jednako plaši, posmatra i guta sve čemu dođe vreme da bude progutano. Petkova priča biće ispričana, možda kao bujica, možda kao udarac krakenovog kraka. Možda je način da pisac prestane da bude neprijatelj upravo u tome – da što poštenije traga za glasom onih kojima je (nasilno ili ne) glas oduzet ili falsifikovan. Pisac je i sam neko ko pisanjem pokušava da podari sebi glas (koji možda nije našao kroz neki drugačiji kanal, kroz uobičajenu govornu komunikaciju), sa željom da bude istinit ili bar dovoljno čujan. I o tome govore neke sporadično razbacane rečenice u raznim Kucijevim romanima, u kojima glavni junaci često lutaju nekim svojim bespućima kao da je svima njima odsečen jezik. Na kraju krajeva, ko se od nas nije bar nekad osećao kao da mu je jezik iščupan? Jezik možda nije srce, a bog možda nije stvorio prvo reč, nego nešto što se ne mora izgovoriti da bi bilo čujno. Možda se istina i važnost bića može na drugi način iskazati – ali onda je ono što je svima nama potrebno: neko čulo koje će biti sposobno da čuje sve varijante iskazivanja kojima se služi sve što je živo. Recimo da je to sasvim dovoljno da iskaže šta bi mogla biti (čak i neosvešćena i nepriznata) misija jednog pisca kakav je ovaj veliki čarobnjak. Velika preporuka za čitanje – pogotovo publici koja razume i podržava potrebu da literatura osim zanimljivosti, pustolovine i romantike progovori i nemuštim glasovima nasilno ućutkanih i gurnutih pod plašt nevidljivosti.

I think this is the only book I've read by Coetzee that doesn't deserve five stars. I really wanted to like it, but been bashed over head with "The subaltern can't speak? Get it? Get It?? GET IT?!?!!?" for 150-odd pages is neither enjoyable or enlightening. A waste of time.

JUNE 2019 - reread
In FOE we witness an author who cheats the cards before our eyes with his innate ability to retell stories, adapt them and give them new meaning. Coetzee challenged one of the most widely published books in history, Daniel DeFoe’s “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” by transforming the famed author DeFoe into an antagonist Foe, Crusoe into Cruso (without the e), included a castaway woman, Susan Barton (based on the heroine of DeFoe’s ROXANA) and a mute slave named Friday. Socially constrained by being female in the 18th century, Barton sought Foe, a male author, to chronicle her year on the island with Cruso. Barton and Foe disagree on the nature of writing with Foe pushing for fabrications to give ‘substance’ to Barton’s dull tale.

This is my second time reading Foe and I was drawn to Friday’s character. I appreciated how Coetzee was able to restore agency to Friday’s silence by making both Foe and Barton unable to identify with Friday and at the same time Coetzee chose not to be the one to give Friday a voice because it was not his place as a white South African - considering that Foe was published when apartheid, an era marked by silence, was still ongoing.

The words story/stories is used a total of 137 in this 156 page book and true/truth/truly is used 97 times. Coetzee does not only want us to think about the art of storytelling but he also forces the reader to ask questions than to provide us with answers: who has the authorial control for telling stories? does silence mean there are no stories to be told? how does language misinform? what is the relationship between language and self? can silence be a form of resistance to oppressive power? what memories do we rely on for truth? how are authors influenced by their personal circumstances and culture in the writing of stories? And maybe the greatest gift this little miracle of a book gives us is the encouragement to question history itself. FOE is both a middle finger to postcolonial narratives and a really enjoyable lecture in creative writing.


Mar 2018
It’s taken me a while to pen down my thoughts on this brilliant retelling of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ mostly because Coetzee packed in so much in such a slim book that I’m still mulling over the subtleties. Is it a homage to Defoe, considered as the ‘father of fiction’ or is it a parody to the classical tale of colonialism and imperialism? I’m swinging towards the latter. Coetzee deliberately opposed Defoe’s hero with a heroine and included Daniel Foe as the antagonist who took Susan Barton’s story and wrote her out of it - effectively reducing her to a muse and giving life to the famous story of Robinson Crusoe. It made me question who’s narrative I could trust, Defoe’s or Coetzee. And it also made me question what liberties an author can take. The writing is exquisite, the characters dream like and it’s overall a very clever book. The pettiness in me was howling at how Coetzee stripped off Defoe’s nobility by eliminating the prefix ‘De’ in his antagonist’s name

“Robinson Crusoe” was J. M. Coetzee’s favorite book as a child, one he has read many times. In “Foe” he has chosen to revisit this wonderful adventure book and create what anthropologists would call an origin myth for the book. Coetzee writes in a style not very distant from DeFoe’s original, that is easy to read with a grand lyrical quality that befits an author destined to win a Nobel Prize.

I thought DeFoe (original surname being “Foe” but requiring some more dignified prefix from vanity or the necessity to sell books) might have run into his tale while a guest of the state in Newgate Debtors Prison, but Coetzee had another vision. Here, widow Susan Barton travels to Bahia, Brazil in the New World searching for her kidnapped daughter, fails to find her, then sails away in a ship eventually overrun in a mutiny. Mutineers set her adrift in a boat with the corpse of their captain; she nears an island and abandons her former captain to swim ashore. There she is rescued by Friday and carried to a grumpy, hairy old European who tolerates her presence, Cruso himself (Mr Crusoe had lost an “e” while on the Coetzee’s island).

Barton adapts herself to the island and her new neighbors, giving them loads of advice which they ignore. At one point, Cruso becomes ill. He is nursed back to health and near recovery decides it is time to seek a simple intimate pleasure with Susan. In her turn, Susan is first surprised but, as he proceeds with his pleasuring, decides that he is a man who is needful, so what the heck – obviously this is not a feminist tract. Her pragmatic attitude continues throughout the story; she is passionate to get Cruso’s story told but blasé about sex. Sounds a great deal like Moll Flanders, another DeFoe creation and a great book!

Barton, Cruso and Friday are rescued after a year on the island but old grumpy succumbs while on the journey home. Susan is determined to tell Cruso’s story and seeks out a proper author to do the job; she is soon directed to a Mr. Daniel Foe. To Susan’s detriment, Foe is being hounded by creditors and she must spend time to track him down on several different occasions. Her next hurdle is to talk him into telling Cruso’s tale on the island as a separate piece rather than as a small part of Barton’s story of the search for her kidnapped daughter. Or so he says.

Foe is so-so as a simple story but Coetzee brings up so many issues during telling the story. The place of women. The ways Friday, an African whose tongue we are told was cut out by a Moorish slaver, is treated – how can one deal with a former slave, now freed man who cannot speak and cannot write? Coetzee caught a bit of hell in his native apartheid-ridden South Africa about the position and treatment of Friday when the book was published in 1983. Foe and Barton argue about the art of writing and the problems of being an author, let alone a penurious author.

This post-modern deconstruction work introduces many issues, too many to confront here. Suffice it to say that this tale is worth reading more than once to squeeze all out of it that Coetzee has distilled into it with a master’s touch.

باز آفريني مدرن داستان كلاسيك رابينسون كروزو از دنيل دفو.ممكن است در نگاه اول تصور شود با داستاني ماجراجويانه طرفيم، اما در واقع "دشمن" در مورد نويسندگي و داستان نويسي است.در دشمن شخصيت نويسنده اي وجود دارد به نام "دنيل فو" كه وجود اين تشابه اسمي بين "دنيل فو" و "دنيل دفو" دست را براي تفسير هاي مختلف باز مي گذارد
داستان تا صفحه ي چهل خوب بود ولي بعد از آن جذابيت خود را از دست داد.و پايان مبهم داستان هيچ كمكي به عوض شدن نظرم در موردش نكرد.

It started off as a 5 star book and sort of dropped as it went along, until the final section made me feel I'd lost it entirely. It's probably 3.5 stars, but I don't feel bad giving it just 3.

The book follows a woman called Susan Barton, a castaway on the same island as a man called Cruso, who after being rescued with the mute Friday, takes her story to a man called Foe, to write her tale and make her rich and famous.

But what follows is a discourse on language, on who writes our stories and who is listened to. How Susan, as a woman, and Friday, as a black man, don't get to tell their histories, unless through the intermediary of an old white man, who abandons them for months on end.

As the short novel drifts on, we lose our grip on who is real, who is a character, what has happened, what is fiction. I must admit I was flummoxed by the final chapter - I've had a suggested reading from the internet, which just about fits, but is horrendously pretentious, and this is when my final rating dropped to a 3. It's just too head scratching and disappointing a finish.

„Dažniausiai tų, kuriuos pažeminame, pradedame nekęsti ir norime, kad jie visam laikui dingtų mums iš akių. Žmogaus širdis – tamsus miškas, kaip mėgsta sakyti brazilai."

Šie metai prasidėjo puikiais atradimais. J. M. Coetzee pavardė dažnai užkliūdavo interneto erdvėje ir vis matydavau jo knygas: „Nešlovė", „Maiklo K gyvenimas ir laikai", „Peterburgo meistras", „Jėzaus vaikystė" ir kitas. Tačiau pirmą knygą perskaičiau tik šį vasarį ir tai buvo romanas „Fo“.

Robinzono Kruzo istorija asocijuojasi su nuotykiais, išbandymais ir žmogaus sugebėjimu išgyventi. O novelėje „Fo" Defo romanas atsiskleidžia visai kitaip. Pagrindinis pasakotojas – moteris, Suzana Barton, per atsitiktinumą atsidūrusi toje pačioje saloje, kaip ir Robinzonas su Penktadieniu.

Turint omenyje, kad romanas „Fo" buvo parašytas 1986 m., moteriškas balsas tarp vyriškų: Kruzo, Fo, Penktadienio skamba kažkaip neįprastai. Manau, kad J. M. Coetzee Suzaną pasirinko ne šiaip sau. Ypatingai palietė Penktadienio, žmogėdros su išpjautu liežuviu, personažas. Jis parodo, koks didelis skirtumas plyti tarp skirtingų kultūrų, rasių ir kalba yra vienas įrankių suprasti vienas kitą.

Autorius kelia daug klausimų, daug įdomių minčių apie rašytoją ir rašymą, faktus ir fantaziją, rasizmą, vergiją. Nors romanas gan filosofiškas, tačiau trumpas ir parašytas ramiu, paprastu stiliumi. Nepaisant to, jis pasižymi vaizdingumu ir tiesiog gyvai jaučiau spyglį, įsmigusį pade, mačiau besisukantį aplink savo ašį Penktadienį, ar plaukiantį jį ant rąstigalio.

Perskaičiusi nusipirkau dar vieną J. M. Coetzee romaną ir manau, kad tai bus tikrai ne paskutinė šio autoriaus knyga. Rekomenduoju visiems, kas ieško prasmingo, tačiau kartu ir lengvo skaitinio.

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3.5/5

Lê-se muito bem, uma espécie de pequena fábula, que cruza interesses literários e meta-literários em cenários de sobrevivência que clamam por discussões existenciais. Peca por um excesso de simbolismo que nos coloca a todo o momento no papel de decifradores de metáforas e significados.

Na narrativa, seguimos uma mãe inglesa que na procura pela sua filha embarca numa viagem ao Brasil, no século XVIII, acabando a naufragar e a dar à ilha em que se encontram Robinson Crusoé e Friday. A fasquia eleva-se quando a senhora resolve entrar em contacto com Daniel Defoe (autor de "Robinson Crusoe" (1719)) para exigir que escreva a história do seu naufrágio.

Coetzee constrói o cenário, lança as personagens no mesmo produzindo um conjunto de ações, deixando ao leitor a tarefa de decifrar o que cada um dos encontros significa. Gostei de muitas das discussões, consegui extrapolar várias explanações, mas não cheguei a nenhuma cabal capaz de explicar todo o livro.

Ponderous, pretentious and strangely humourless despite its absurdity, Foe has not aged well: its conceit (a retelling of a canonical work) feels dated and cliche. The prose aims for an 18th Century feel, but often sounds like Yoda ('Many strengths you have, but invention is not one of them.') And once again, Coetzee proves he cannot write convincing female characters. Has any 'great' author written as many bad books as Coetzee has? At his best, he is a writer of exceptional power, but he strikes out more often than he connects.