J M Coetzee

J. M. Coetzee (John Maxwell Coetzee) , 1940-, South African novelist, b. John Michael Coetzee. Educated at the Univ. of Cape Town (M.A. 1963) and the Univ. of Texas (Ph.D. 1969), he taught in the United States and returned home (1983) to become a professor of English literature at Cape Town. He immigrated to Australia in 2002, becoming a citizen there in 2006, and working as a research fellow at the Univ. of Adelaide. Several of Coetzee's novels are noted for their eloquent protest against political and social conditions in South Africa, particularly the suffering caused by imperialism, apartheid , and postapartheid violence. His books are also known for their technical virtuosity. Often melancholy and detached in tone and spare in style, his fiction treats themes of human violence and loss, weakness and defeat, and isolation and survival. His critically acclaimed novels include In the Heart of the Country (1977), Waiting for the Barbarians (1982), the two Booker (later Man Booker) Prize-winning novels, The Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999), The Master of Petersburg (1994), Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005), and Diary of a Bad Year (2007). The last three novels, written after his move to Australia, have had Australian settings and have shown a more pronounced philosophical orientation. Among Coetzee's other writings are the memoirs Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002) and several essay collections, among them Inner Workings (2007), studies of 20 20th-century writers. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

Bibliography: See D. Attwell, ed., Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992); studies by D. Penner (1989), D. Attwell (1993), G. Huggan and S. Watson, ed. (1996), D. Head (1997), S. Kossew, ed. (1998), D. Attridge (2004), M. Canepari-Labib (2005), J. Poynter, ed. (2006), L. Sikorska, ed. (2006), and L. Wright (2006).

Coetzee, J.M. ( John Michael) (1940– ) South African novelist and critic. His novels deal with life under forms of imperialism, including the South African apartheid system in In the Heart of the Country (1977) and Age of Iron (1990). Beside Peter Carey, Coetzee is the only writer to be awarded two Booker Prizes – for Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999). Other novels include Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Foe (1986), and The Master of Petersburg (1994).

Coetzee, J. M. ( John Michael Coetzee) (1940– ), South African novelist and academic, born in Cape Town, professor of general literature at the University of Cape Town since 1983. His first book, Ducklands (1974), contains two linked novellas, and was followed by In the Heart of the Country (1977), filmed in 1986 as Dust. After Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), a powerful allegory of oppression, came The Life and Times of Michael K (1983, Booker Prize), in which a man takes his ailing mother back to her home in the country as South Africa is torn by civil war. Other novels include Foe (1986); Age of Iron (1990), a compelling story of a woman dying from cancer; Doubling the Point (1992); The Master of Petersburg (1994), set in 1869, about an exiled Russian novelist who becomes involved in revolutionary subterfuge; and Youth (2002) about a young South African in London during the 1960s. Disgrace (1999, Booker Prize), set in post-apartheid South Africa, is the story of a middle-aged professor of English who is charged with sexual harassment and seeks refuge on his daughter's remote farm. Stranger Shores: Essays 1986–1999 (2001) collects essays on literary subjects.