Following on from """"Stranger Shores"""", which contained J M Coetzee's essays from 1986 to 1999, this work gathers together his literary essays from 2000 to 2005. It discusses writers such as - Italo Svevo, Joseph Roth, Bruno Schulz, Sandor Marai - who lived through the Austro-Hungarian fin de siecle and felt the influence of Schopenhauer, and Freud.