The Pole and Other Stories is a 2023 book by J.M. Coetzee. In the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada it was published as the novella "The Pole" along with five stories that were written over the previous two decades.[1][2]
In the United States it was published as a stand-alone novel, titled The Pole, and did not include the five “appended” stories.
Brief summary
The novel (or novella)[1]The Pole centres around a Polish pianist, 72 year-old Witold Walczykiewicz, who is invited to Barcelona, Spain to perform. There he meets middle-aged Beatriz, with whom he begins to correspond after returning to Poland. Witold eventually travels to Mallorca, where Beatriz’s husband has a summer home, to be with her.[3][4]
All but one of the additional five stories collected alongside “The Pole” (in some published editions), centre around the character of Elizabeth Costello,[5] a character who has appeared before in Coetzee’s work and is sometimes described as Coetzee’s own alter ego.[1] The four Elizabeth Costello stories are: “As a Woman Grows Older,” “The Old Woman and the Cats,” “The Glass Abattoir,” and “Hope.” The fifth story, “The Dog,” first appeared in 2018 as “El Perro” in a “Spanish-language edition of Coetzee’s stories titled Siete Cuentos Morales (Seven Moral Tales).”[6]
Reception
Upon release, The Pole and Other Stories was generally well-received. According to Book Marks, the book received "positive" reviews based on twelve critic reviews, with five being "rave" and five being "positive" and two being "mixed".[7] Globally, the work was received generally well with Complete Review saying on the consensus "Not his best, but a solid late work".[8]
Publication history
The Pole was first published in a Spanish translation by Mariana Dimópoulos under the title El Polaco by the Argentinian publisher El Hilo de Ariadna.[9][3] This was Coetzee's third book whose initial publication was in the Southern Hemisphere. Coetzee explains that this is deliberate on his part because "the symbolism of publishing in the South before the North is important to me".[9]
The Pole was also his second book to originally appear in Spanish translation. Coetzee says the Spanish translation of the novel provides a more accurate portrayal of his objectives than the English.[4] An English edition was published in July, 2023.[6][10]
