John Maxwell Coetzee is the first writer to be awarded the Booker Prize twice, in 1983 for The Life and Times of Michael K. and in 1999 for the novel “Infamy.” In 2003, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. “By describing the weaknesses and shortcomings of people, the writer reveals the divine spark in the human being,” said a statement from the Swedish Academy. A famous South African author, an experienced and insightful critic, Coetzee collected his best essays in one collection. Reflecting on the work of the world's greatest literary minds, from Daniel Defoe and Johann Goethe to Irene Nemirovsky and Philip Roth, the writer in a sense challenges the modern man, who seems to have already found all the answers.