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Slow Man is pretty, well, slow. Apart from that I find he has hardly diminished, though I guess he has become a lot more overtly post-modern and experimental in his approach to the form and structure of his novels.
His latest book, Summertime, is amazing. For me it ranks up alongside Age of Iron, Waiting for the Barbarians and The Life and Times of Michael K as being his best. It's very particularly South African, though. Like Age of Iron or Waiting for the Barbarians, it's almost like looking at an x-ray of one's own feelings towards the whole Apartheid regime and the horrible disfunction in so much of South African society, which still unfortunately resonates in the present day.
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He would clear the rubble from the mouth of the shaft, he would bend the handle of the teaspoon in a loop and tie the string to it, he would lower it down the shaft deep into the earth, and when he brought it up there would be water in the bowl of the spoon; and in that way, he would say, one can live.
J.M. Coetzee, "Life and Times of Michael K"
Free music at: www.last.fm/music/Jacques+de+Villiers
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