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The Death of Jesus by JM Coetzee review – a barren end to a bizarre trilogy

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/31/the-death-of-jesus-jm-coetzee-review

This empty-hearted conclusion to Coetzee’s allegorical saga feels like an elaborate joke at the reader’s expense

The Death of Jesus is the final book in the bizarre allegorical trilogy that Nobel laureate and two-time Booker-winner JM Coetzee has been working on for most of the past decade. The stories tell of a precocious orphan boy, David, who is taken into the care of a fellow refugee, Simón, and, eventually, a woman, Inés.

The first book, The Childhood of Jesus, recounts the sinister Spanish-speaking authorities in Novilla, the town where David and Simón wash up. These are novels about biopolitics, about the ways in which benevolent language can mask state violence. The government of the unnamed province is committed to caring for the basic needs of the refugees who arrive on their shores, while stripping them of all individuality, all means of expression. Simón realises that David possesses certain unconventional gifts, and that in order to indulge them freely they must flee the town.

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