The Pole and Other Stories is a 2023 book by J.M. Coetzee. In the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada it was published as the novella "The Pole" along with five short stories. In the United States it was published as a stand-alone novel, titled The Pole, and did not include the short stories.
Brief summary
The novel (or novella) The Pole centres around a Polish pianist, Witold, who even travels to Mallorca to be with Beatriz, a woman he has fallen in love with.
All but one of the additional five stories collected along side “The Pole” (in some published editions), centre around the character of Elizabeth Costello, a character who has appeared before in Coetzee’s work and is sometimes described as Coetzee’s own alter ego.
Publication history
The novel was first published in a Spanish translation by Mariana Dimópoulos under the title El Polaco by the Argentinian publisher El Hilo de Ariadna. This was Coetzee's third book whose initial publication was in the Southern Hemisphere. Coetzee explains that this is deliberate on his part because "the symbolism of publishing in the South before the North is important to me".
The Pole was also his second book to originally appear in Spanish translation. Coetzee says the Spanish translation of the novel provides a more accurate portrayal of his objectives than the English. An English edition was published in July, 2023.