J. M. Coetzee's «The childhood of Jesus»: philosophy in the novel

The first Russian attempt to approach the meaning and form of J. M. Coetzee's most complex latest novel «The Childhood of Jesus» (2013), the paper opens with a survey of the press reviews of the novel pub­lication, stating the reviewers' confusion in the face of the text. It offers a look into the novel as Coetzee's another attempt at handling the main philosophical problems he had previously touched upon in his work, the problems characteristic of post-structuralism. The specifics of the plot and characters in the novel are seen as predicated on the main philosophical conflict of the text: the opposition of essentialist rationality and human irrationality. The former is perceived as the dangerous reductionism, which eliminates the meaning of hu­manity's existence; the latter is depicted as the site of true humanity, passion, love, potential for change. In dystopian pictures of Novilla's socialism, the author rejects bureaucratization, ossification of social life, whereas Simon and the boy embody the values of individualism and non-conformism. The problems of cog­nition, language, memory, narrative in the novel are also touched upon. The concurrence between Coetzee's philosophy and the aesthetics of the novel is shown.