Here and Now - Tapa dura

Extraordinary book. Times Literary Supplement Uniquely insightful, unfailingly interesting, men of letters. -- Arifa Akbar Independent You feel that Auster and Coetzee are addressing each other directly and honestly. Some of it is rather moving, and underpinning it all is genuine affection. Daily Telegraph Elegant letters ... These pages are at their most compelling when the respective writers begin to dwell on the currency of their fiction. -- Tim Adams Observer

Paul Auster and J. M. Coetzee are respectively responsible for some of the great contemporary works of fiction: Auster's The New York Trilogy or Coetzee's Disgrace are only two of these authors' legendary works. In Here and Now, these remarkable thinkers are brought together in print for the first time. Although Auster and Coetzee had been reading each other's books for years, the two writers did not meet until February 2008. Not long after, Auster received a letter from Coetzee, suggesting they begin exchanging letters on a regular basis and, 'God willing, strike sparks off each other.' Here and Now is the result of that proposal: an epistolary dialogue between two great writers who became great friends. Over three years their letters touched on nearly every subject, from sports to fatherhood, film festivals to Israel and Palestine, philosophy to politics, from the financial crisis to art, family, marriage, friendship, and love. Their correspondence offers an intimate and often amusing portrait of these two men as they explore the complexities of the here and now, and reflects two sharp intellects whose pleasure in each other's friendship is apparent on every page.