Why Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K holds up well after 30 years

J.M. Coetzee won a Nobel Prize for literature largely because of his early works set in his native South Africa, before black independence and during the reign of apartheid. I'm taking a look back at his short novel, some consider it his best, from 1983 - Life and Times of Michael K - and finding it a truly harrowing, powerful work that stands up well today, some 30 years later, and in a world with a completely different political climate in SA. The novel is about the eponymous Michael, in his 30s, a man with some physical deformities (a so-called harelip) and with some degree of retardation. He was born out of wedlock to an house-cleaner, who pretty  much abandons him to a school for orphans and the needy, but as the novel begins his mother is in terrible health and calls on him to help her get medical care and some support. Most important, SA is in the midst of a war, and there are everywhere terrible shortages of basic food and supplies, police patrols that can shoot on sight, outbreaks of rioting and street violence, a government crackdown requiring permits for just about anyone using trains or highways, and a bureaucratic backlog that makes it nearly impossible to access government or health-care services. Michael and his mother are living in essentially a crawl space in a building that has been abandoned and looted, and the sense is that thousands or millions of people are living in similar conditions. M and his mother determine to set out for her native village in the north - a foolhardy and dangerous expedition, as the learn right away. Strangely, JMC never (I think) mentions race at all, though it's not hard to see that the experience of Michael and his mother closely tracks that of black residents of Cape Town in the '80s - poverty, poor services, police crackdowns, etc. The war that is tearing SA apart is in some ways JMC's projection into a future - imagining a war that in fact never did happen, or at least not in the way he foresaw; however, it's easy to imagine Michael's experience as a refugee in war-torn countries today - Syria in particular comes to mind. There's also an allegorical element to this novel: a journey toward an unseen and maybe unattainable goal, perhaps a journey toward salvation, that will no doubt (I'm about 1/3 of the way through) will not end happily.

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