Author Bio
• Birth—February 9, 1940
• Where—Cape Town, South Africa
• Education—B.A. (English), B.A. (Math), University of Cape Town; Ph.D., University
of Texas, Austin
• Awards—Nobel Prize, 2003; Man Booker Prize—1983 and 1999
• Currently—lives in Adelaide, Australia
John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African-born novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He relocated to Australia in 2002 and lives in Adelaide where, in 2006, he became an Australian citizen.
In 2013, Richard Poplak of the Daily Maverick described Coetzee as "inarguably the most celebrated and decorated living English-language author." Even before receiving the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, Coetzee had been awarded the Man Booker Prize twice: in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K and in 1999 for Disgrace. Other awards include the Jerusalem Prize, Central News Agency Prize (three times), France's Prix Femina Etranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize.
Early life and academia
Coetze was born in Cape Town, Cape Province, Union of South Africa to Afrikaner parents. His father, Zacharias Coetzee, was an occasional attorney and government employee, and his mother, Vera Coetzee (nee Wehmeyer), a schoolteacher. He is descended on his father's side from 17th-century Dutch immigrants to South Africa and on his mother's side from German and Polish immigrants. The family mainly spoke English at home, but John spoke Afrikaans with other relatives.
Coetzee spent most of his early life in Cape Town and in Worcester in Cape Province (modern-day Western Cape), as recounted in his fictionalised memoir, Boyhood (1997). The family moved to Worcester when he was eight, after his father had lost his government job. He studied mathematics and English at the University of Cape Town where he received two Bachelor of Arts degrees, both with honours: one in English in 1960 and the other in Mathematics in 1961.
In 1962 he relocated to the UK, working as a computer programmer for IBM in London, and ICT (International Computers and Tabulators) in Bracknell. He stayed until 1965. In 1963, while still in the UK, Coetzee was awarded a Master of Arts degree from the University of Cape Town for a thesis on the novels of Ford Madox Ford entitled "The Works of Ford Madox Ford with Particular Reference to the Novels" (1963). His experiences in England were later recounted in Youth (2002), his second volume of fictionalized memoirs.
In 1965 Coetzee won a Fulbright Scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin, in the US, where he received his doctorate in 1969. His PhD dissertation, "The English Fiction of Samuel Beckett: An Essay in Stylistic Analysis" (1968), was on computer stylistic analysis of Beckett's works.
In 1968, he began teaching English literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo where he stayed until 1971. It was at Buffalo that he began his first novel, Dusklands.
Beginning in 1968, he sought permanent residence in the United States, a process that was ultimately unsuccessful due in part to his involvement in anti-Vietnam-War protests. He had been one of 45 faculty members who, in 1970, occupied the university's Hayes Hall and were subsequently arrested for criminal trespass—although charges against the 45 were dropped in 1971.
Coetzee eventually returned to South Africa to teach English literature at the University of Cape Town where, in 1983, he was promoted to Professor of General Literature. From 1999-2001, he was Distinguished Professor of Literature.
He retired in 2002, relocating to Adelaide, Australia, where he was made an honorary research fellow in the English Department of the University of Adelaide.
Man Booker Prize
Coetzee was the first writer to be awarded the Booker Prize twice: first for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983, and again for Disgrace in 1999. Two other authors have since managed this—Peter Carey (in 1988 and 2001) and Hilary Mantel (in 2009 and 2012).
Summertime, named on the 2009 longlist, was an early favorite to win an unprecedented third Booker Prize for Coetzee. It subsequently made the shortlist, but lost out to the eventual winner Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Coetzee was also longlisted in 2003 for Elizabeth Costello and in 2005 for Slow Man.[
Nobel Prize
Coetzee was the recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the fifth African writer to be so honored and the second South African after Nadine Gordimer. When awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy cited the moral nature of Coetzee's work and his "well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance."
Public image
Coetzee is known as reclusive, avoiding publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person. According to South African writer Rian Malan...
Coetzee is a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke, or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. A colleague who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once. An acquaintance has attended several dinner parties where Coetzee has uttered not a single word.
Asked in an email about Malan's comment, Coetzee wrote, "I have met Rian Malan only once in my life. He does not know me and is not qualified to talk about my character."
As a result of his reclusive nature, signed copies of Coetzee's fiction are highly sought after. Recognizing this, he was a key figure in the establishment of Oak Tree Press's First Chapter Series, limited edition signed works by literary greats to raise money for the child victims and orphans of the African HIV/AIDS crisis.
Personal life
He married Philippa Jubber in 1963 and divorced in 1980. The two have a daughter Gisela (1968) and a son Nicolas (1966) from their marriage. Nicolas died in 1989 at the age of 23 in an accident. Coetzee's younger brother, the journalist David Coetzee, died in 2010.
In 2006, Coetzee became an Australian citizen.
Anti-apartheid and racism
During the apartheid era, Coetzee called on the South African government to abandon its apartheid policy. Scholar Isidore Diala has stated that J. M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and Andre Brink were "three of South Africa's most distinguished white writers, all with definite anti-apartheid commitment."
Jane Poyner, in a South African academic journal, argued that Coetzee's 1999 novel Disgrace allegorizes South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Asked about his views on the commission, Coetzee said:
In a state with no official religion, the TRC was somewhat anomalous: a court of a certain kind based to a large degree on Christian teaching and on a strand of Christian teaching accepted in their hearts by only a tiny proportion of the citizenry. Only the future will tell what the TRC managed to achieve.
Following his Australian citizenship ceremony, Coetzee said that...
I did not so much leave South Africa, a country with which I retain strong emotional ties, but come to Australia. I came because from the time of my first visit in 1991, I was attracted by the free and generous spirit of the people, by the beauty of the land itself and—when I first saw Adelaide—by the grace of the city that I now have the honour of calling my home."
When he initially moved to Australia, he had cited the South African government's lax attitude to crime in that country as a reason for the move. That statement led to a spat with Thabo Mbeki, who, speaking of Coetzee's novel Disgrace stated that "South Africa is not only a place of rape." In a 1999 investigation into racism in the media, the African National Congress pointed to Coetzee's novel Disgrace as exploiting racial stereotypes. However, when Coetzee won his Nobel Prize, Mbeki congratulated him "on behalf of the South African nation and indeed the continent of Africa."
Other political concerns
In 2005, Coetzee criticized contemporary anti-terrorism laws as resembling those employed by the apartheid regime in South Africa:
I used to think that the people who created [South Africa's] laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time.
The main character in Coetzee's 2007 Diary of a Bad Year shares similar concerns about the policies of John Howard and George W. Bush.
In recent years, Coetzee has become a vocal critic of animal cruelty, including the modern animal husbandry industry, and advocate for the animal rights movement. Coetzee's fiction has similarly engaged with the problems of animal cruelty and animal welfare, in particular his books Disgrace, The Lives of Animals, Elizabeth Costello and in the short story "The Old Woman and the Cats," which has as its protagonist Elizabeth Costello. He is vegetarian. (Author bio adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 11/4/2015.)
Novels
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)
Disgrace (1999)
Elizabeth Costello (2003)
Slow Man (2005)
Diary of a Bad Year (2007)
The Childhood of Jesus (2013)