Diary of a Bad Year

Nobel Prize Winner J.M. Coetzee uses a formal device to explore the intersection between the essay and novel form. Each page of DIARY OF A BAD YEAR begins with a scrap of essay, is followed by a the perspective of C., an aging author who clearly acts as a stand-in for Coetzee himself and who has written the essays, and concludes with the perspective of the young and attractive Anya, a neighbor who has become C.'s typist. The situation begins to become unstable as Anya's businessman boyfriend initiates a scheme to defraud C. of his money. Selected by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 2008.