Worlds, world-making, and Southern horizons

This chapter introduces the critical issues that permeate the discussion of the location and horizon of Coetzee’s literary practice. It starts by noting a polarization among critics between those who characterize his literary project as being a highly localized one that speaks to the condition of South Africa and those who regard his work as being concerned with universal problems and as belonging to ‘world literature’. It delves into this problem by considering the way Coetzee himself narrates the vicissitudes of a writer navigating national and global literary fields in Elizabeth Costello. Looking next at his corpus as a whole, the chapter argues that an appreciation of Coetzee’s peculiar world-making fictional strategies helps us to discern that world (or worlds) to which his fictions seek to orient us. It concludes by considering Coetzee’s recent interest in the ‘literatures of the south’, speculating that his corpus has been concerned to explore through its world-making what it means to live beneath southern horizons.