Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee does not like giving lectures. In fact, for the most part, he declines all such invitations. But when he was asked to present the prestigious Robert B. Silvers lecture in New York, he relented, and agreed to participate in order to honor Silver, the founder of the New York Review of Books. Still, a conventional lecture would simply have been too much to expect from Coetzee, and the South African author did not disappoint, eschewing observations on craft and style in favor of the creation of a new work of fiction to read to his audience.