The Lives of Animals

Elizabeth Costello, a distinguished novelist, has been invited to the United States to give a university lecture on animal rights, a subject which has come to obsess her. Her son, his wife and his university colleagues confront her with reactions that run the range from sympathy to irritation and scepticism. Here the internationally acclaimed novelist, J.M. Coetzee, uses fiction to present a powerful and moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity.