The Childhood of Jesus

Strip away the title of J M Coetzee's latest novel and start from there. A boy and a man arrive in an outpost called Novilla, where they are assigned new identities They become David and Simon. Without any memories of their former lives they learn tourist-grade Spanish and Simon begins to work on a grain farm. Their friendship, and Simon's attempts to help David find his mother are the nuts and the bolts of a plot that doesn't seem to have much to do with young Jesus at all. But that's where allegory comes in.

What The Childhood of Jesus is really actually about is hard to pin down, but it has something interesting to say about the power of memory, and the creation of self-identity. The novel's relationship to the Christ story remains opaque and obscure throughout - a parable of sorts but hardly as neat and gift-wrapped as those Jesus himself delivered up.

The double Booker Prize-winning Coetzee (for Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace) has created something of an oddity. A peculiar and often brilliant novel that avoids classification, resists interpretation and will probably give the judges of the next Booker plenty of headaches.