Share this story Close X Switch to Desktop Site  He's slow to
win our affection  In Coetzee's new novel, the protagonist
analyzes rather than acts  About these ads  One night, while out
for a bicycle ride, an Australian photographer is hit by a car
and loses a leg. So begins the frustratingly unpleasant new
novel by J.M. Coetzee, winner of both the Nobel and Booker
Prizes and a slew of other international awards.  It is meant to
be a meditation on how the body affects our identity and about
the writing process. Instead, Slow Man has the distinction of
being the worst novel I've read by a Nobel winner.  Coetzee's
novels tend to be well-written but chilly. But with "Disgrace,"
the most powerful of his books that I've read, you certainly
couldn't argue that not enough happens - in that a South African
professor engineers his own downfall.  In this case, however,
Paul Rayment, the "Slow Man" of the title, refuses the
prosthesis that would allow him mobility and reluctantly hires a
nurse. After a few missteps, he