synopsis:

'youth' is about John, a Math and English student in Capetown (south africa), who hopes to flee the country (which is in a political storm) and become a poet. Studying mathematics, reading poetry, saving money, he tries to ensure that when he arrives in the real world, wherever that may be, he will be prepared to experience life to its full intensity, and transform it into art. Arriving at last in London, however, he finds neither poetry nor romance. Instead he succumbs to the monotony of life as a computer programmer, from which random, loveless affairs offer no relief. Devoid of inspiration, he stops writing.

An awkward colonial, a constitutional outsider, he begins a dark pilgrimage in which he is continually tested and continually found wanting. he knows he's got talent for writing though no one seems to notice the 'sacred fire' lying within him, and he starts to suspect if poetry is what he's destined to write. Or is it prose? Or is it fiction?These artistic meditations go along with his rather promiscuous life in South Africa and England. He's also looking for the right woman, but as his experience tells him he's not capable of engaging to anyone yet. He hasn't found the one who will look into his 'sacred fire' for life either. Is there such a woman? The book doesn't tell, and the story leaves John looking forward, finally concluding that his misery is caused by too much expectations from life and not being happy with mediocrity.

on this book:

'youth' is the second volume of coetzee's memoirs, the first is 'Boyhood: scenes from provincial life' (1997).in 'youth' coetzee dissects himself as a young man with a cruelty that is oddly consoling for anyone able to identify with him. Set against the background of the 1960s - Sharpeville, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam - 'Youth' is a remarkable portrait of a consciousness, isolated and adrift, turning in on itself. J. M. Coetzee explores a young man's struggle to find his way in the world with tenderness and a fierce clarity.