Dusklands.

COETZEE, J.M.

$12,500.00

Item Number: 112981

Johannesburg: Raven Press, 1974.

First edition of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s first book. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author to his wife on the title page, “Philippa – love from John.” Coetzee married Philippa Jubber in 1963 with whom he had two children, Nicolas and Gisela. The couple divorced after 17 years when the children were 14 and 12. Nicolas died at the age of 23 in a tragic accident and Giselle suffered years of health issues. Phillipa died in 1991 of cancer and was entirely absent from Coetzee’s autobiographical works. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. An exceptional association copy.

Dusklands is a pair of novellas in the tradition of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The first novella "Dusklands" probes the links between the powerful and the powerless. The second novella "Vietnam Project" is narrated by a researcher investigating the effectiveness of United States propaganda and psychological warfare in Vietnam. The question of power is also explored in "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee," the story of an eighteenth-century Boer frontiersman who vows revenge on the Hottentot natives because they have failed to treat him with the respect that he thinks a white man deserves.