South African writers: J. M. Coetzee

A colleague of over a decade is said to have remarked that in all the years of their acquaintance, he had seen J. M. Coetzee laugh but once. A profound, serious man with no time for frivolity, Coetzee is the epitome of discipline in his personal life, and was a vocal critic of the apartheid movement. He still speaks out forcefully against practices that discriminate between human beings. The famously reclusive Noble Prize winning academic, novelist, essayist, literary critic and translator is known to be a person of few words, and so averse to publicity and attention that he failed to turn up to collect his Booker Prizes in person.

Born in Cape Town on 9 February 1940 to Afrikaner parents, John Maxwell Coetzee spent his childhood in South Africa before moving to London in 1962 with a job as computer programmer at IBM. Accounts of his early days in South Africa and his time in England are recounted in two volumes of his fictionalised memoirs Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002) respectively.

He later moved to the US, obtained a PhD in Linguistics, and began teaching English and Literature in the State University of New York, Buffalo. It was there that he started writing his first novel Dusklands. His application for permanent residence in the US was denied as a result of his earlier involvement in protests against the Vietnam War.
He is now an Australian citizen and lives in South Australia.

Coetzee is the second South African recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, and the first person to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice.  His work has also been recognised with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the CNA Prize, the Sunday Express Book of the Year award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the French Prix Femina Etranger, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the 1987 Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society.

On awarding the Nobel Prize to J. M. Coetzee, the Swedish Academy commended Coetzee’s ability to write fiction that "in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider". 

“Coetzee sees through the obscene poses and false pomp of history, lending voice to the silenced and the despised”, said Per Wästberg of the Swedish Academy  in his presentation speech, adding:  “Just go home and read, and some images will stay with you forever."

Fiction by J. M. Coetzee:

• Dusklands (1974)
• In the Heart of the Country (1977)
• Waiting for the Barbarians (1980)
• Life & Times of Michael K (1983)
• Foe (1986)
• Age of Iron (1990)
• The Master of Petersburg (1994)
• The Lives of Animals (1999)
• Disgrace (1999)
• Elizabeth Costello (2003)
• Slow Man (2005)
• Diary of a Bad Year (2007)

Also see:

Swedish Academy 2003 press release

Nobel Prize for Literature 2003 Presentation Speech

Image source: The Nobel Foundation

Buy books by J. M. Coetzee online