Coetzee and the limits of the survival

Abstract

Nobel prize-winner John Maxwell Coetzee, during a series of seminars organised by an organisation dedicated to raising awareness about the rights of non-human animals, read a previously unpublished piece of writing, in the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, to a full house, through one of his best known characters, Elisabeth Costello, highlighting the cruelty of human beings towards non-human animals. With brilliant references to philosophers and their work, he reflected upon our own limits, on compassion, justice and conscience.