Youth

A book on a depressive young man who leaves south africa for London, with brilliant comments on London, which is why I like it. Otherwise, Coetzee is just without any hope.

"He has not mastered London. If there is any mastery going on, it is London mastering him."

"What is he doing in this huge, cold city where merely to stay alive means holding tight all the time, trying not to fall?"

"There are two, perhaps three places in the world where life can be lived at its fullest intensity: London, Paris, perhaps Vienna. [...] London may be stony, labyrinthine and cold, but behind its forbidding walls men and women are at work writing books, painting paintings, composing music."