The truth is, I didn’t see what he had written. She flicked past it too fast. Now I’ll go to the grave wondering what it was. I’m not the only one who has speculated about their relationship. Plenty of people have wondered out loud if they were ever lovers. Perhaps they were, years ago when they were young and pulsing with desire. But not recently. Not since Coetzee joined the ranks of the literati. When men achieve celebrity overnight, they don’t rush to sleep with women their own age.

“Look here.” Prof. September stabs at the page with her forefinger. “‘There is a snappishness to Lucy these days that he can see no justification for. There are times when they are like strangers occupying the same space.’ And here: ‘He knew he couldn’t leave Lucy alone on the farm. She wouldn’t be entirely safe.’ Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. You’re on practically every page.”

“In the beginning, yes, but . . .”

“It’s almost obsessive, the way he dwells on your every habit and mannerism. The way you screw up your eyes—you’re doing it right now, by the way—your duck-footedness. The New York Times called it a fixation. I don’t know if you saw that review?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“If there is a flaw in this book—which I am not prepared to admit—it is this compulsive attention to detail in his descriptions of you. It makes him seem a little silly when one considers how he must have been watching you all those months.”

No, it is not yet Uhuru. We live in a world in which a notable feminist scholar, a black woman, shows pique at evidence that a white man has been paying attention to someone else.

“There is a double male gaze at play here,” I say. “The male author has created a male character to observe a female character. He creates a fictional prism of maleness through which to filter his perceptions of me.”

Prof. September has written about the layering of the male gaze in fiction. She was among the first academics to identify this prism. But she shakes her head.

“No, John Coetzee is a feminist ally. His consciousness is too acutely raised for him to fall prey to the traditional tropes of the male gaze.”

I can’t control the smirk that threatens to take over my face. John Coetzee loathed feminism. He thought Women’s Studies shouldn’t be recognised as an academic discipline. If he could hear himself described as a feminist ally, he would hoot with laughter. Or descend into a sullen rage. It is hard to believe that anyone could be this deluded.

“The point,” Prof. September continues, “is that there is no lacuna in the text as far as your character is concerned. I’d call it an unnecessary wealth of description myself.”