John Maxwell Coetzee

 

John Maxwell Coetzee

Born:	9 February 1940 (1940--) (age 67) Cape Town, South Africa
Occupation:	Novelist, Essayist, Literary Critic, Linguist
Nationality:	Australia
Influences:	Samuel Beckett, Ford Madox Ford, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Daniel Defoe, Franz Kafka

John Maxwell "J.M." Coetzee (IPA: /kʊtˈsiː/ or Afrikaans IPA: [kutˈsiˑe]) (born 9 February 1940) is an author and academic from South Africa (now an Australian citizen living in South Australia). A novelist and literary critic as well as a translator, Coetzee won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Early life and education

Coetzee was born in Cape Town. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a schoolteacher; he is a descendent of early Dutch settlers dating to the 17th century. He also has Polish roots, his great-grandfather Baltazar (or Balcer) Dubiel was a Polish immigrant to South Africa. He spent most of his early life in Cape Town and in Worcester in Western Cape Province as recounted in his fictionalized memoir, Boyhood (1997). He attended St. Joseph's College, a Catholic school in the Cape Town suburb of Rondebosch, and later studied mathematics and English at the University of Cape Town, receiving his Bachelor of Arts with Honours in English in 1960 and his Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Mathematics in 1961.

Academic and literary career

In the early 1960s, Coetzee relocated to London, where he worked for a time at IBM as a computer programmer; and in 1963 he was awarded Master of Arts degree from UCT; his experiences there were later recounted in Youth (2002), his second volume of fictionalized memoirs.

Coetzee received a Ph.D in linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin, where his dissertation was on computer stylistic analysis of the works of Samuel Beckett. After leaving Texas he taught English and literature at the SUNY-Buffalo in New York until 1971. In 1971, Coetzee sought permanent residence in the United States, but it was denied due to his involvement in anti-Vietnam War protests. He then returned to South Africa to become an English literature professor at the University of Cape Town. Upon retiring in 2002, Coetzee relocated to Adelaide, Australia, where he was made an honorary research fellow at the English Department of the University of Adelaide, where his partner, Dorothy Driver, is a fellow academic. He served as professor on the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago until 2003. In addition to his novels, he has published critical works and translations from Dutch and Afrikaans.

On 6 March 2006 Coetzee became an Australian citizen in a ceremony presided over by Australian Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone. Following the ceremony, Coetzee said that "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."^[1]

Personality and reputation

He is known as reclusive and eschews publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person. He married in 1963 and divorced in 1980. He had a daughter and a son from the marriage, but his son was killed at the age of 23 in an accident, an event Coetzee confronts in his 1994 novel The Master of Petersburg.

Rian Malan wrote that 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." [1]

Achievements and awards

Coetzee has gained many awards throughout his career. The novel Waiting for the Barbarians was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1980, and he is three times winner of the CNA Prize. Age of Iron was awarded the Sunday Express Book of the Year award, and The Master of Petersburg was awarded the Irish Times International Fiction Prize in 1995. He has also won the French Fémina Prize, the Faber memorial Award, the Commonwealth Literary Award, and in 1987 won the Jerusalem Prize for literature on the freedom of the individual in society.

He was the first author to be awarded the Booker Prize twice: first for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983, and again for Disgrace in 1999. Only one author has matched this since - Peter Carey, an Australian.

On 2 October 2003 it was announced that he was to be the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the fourth African writer to be so honoured, and the second (as he then was) South African (after Nadine Gordimer). When awarded the prize, he was praised for "in innumerable guises portraying the involvement of the outsider." The press release for the award cited his "well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue, and analytical brilliance," while focusing on the moral nature of his work. The prize ceremony was held in Stockholm on 10 December 2003.

Coetzee was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe by the South African government on 27 September 2005 for his "exceptional contribution in the field of literature and for putting South Africa on the world stage."

Bibliography

Fiction

• Dusklands (1974) ISBN 0-14-024177-9
• In the Heart of the Country (1977) ISBN 0-14-006228-9
• Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) ISBN 0-14-006110-X
• Life & Times of Michael K (1983) ISBN 0-14-007448-1
• Foe (1986) ISBN 0-14-009623-X
• Age of Iron (1990) ISBN 0-14-027565-7
• The Master of Petersburg (1994) ISBN 0-14-023810-7
• Disgrace (1999) ISBN 0-09-928952-0
• Elizabeth Costello (2003) ISBN 0-670-03130-5
• Slow Man (2005) ISBN 0-670-03459-2
• Diary of a Bad Year (2007)

Fictionalised autobiography

• Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) ISBN 0-14-026566-X
• Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002) ISBN 0-670-03102-X

Non-fiction

• (1988) ISBN 0-300-03974-3
• Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992) ISBN 0-674-21518-4
• (1997) ISBN 0-226-11176-8
• The Lives of Animals (1999) ISBN 0-691-07089-X
• (2002) ISBN 0-14-200137-6
• Inner Workings: Literary Essays, 2000-2005 (2007) NY Times Review is available.

Translations/Introductions

• Landscape with Rowers: Poetry from the Netherlands Translated and Introduced by J. M. Coetzee (2004) ISBN 0-691-12385-3
• Introduction to Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (Oxford World's Classics) ISBN 0-192-10033-5
• Introduction to Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (Penguin Classics) ISBN 0-142-43797-2

See also

• List of African writers

References

External links

• "J. M. Coetzee's ruffled mirrors": a review in the TLS by Elizabeth Lowry, 22/08/07
• Official 2003 Nobel Laureate Bio
• J.M. Coetzee's Nobel lecture
• J.M. Coetzee Online Exhibit, University at Buffalo Libraries
• The work of J.M. Coetzee – feature article on ReadySteadyBook
• Survey of Coetzee's writings
• Review of the Booker Prize winning Disgrace
• John Maxwell Coetzee at www.contemporarywriters.com
• Interview in a Dutch television show (Click on Video, right side)
• South African National Orders
• Coetzee' Bookweb' on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.
• Review of Slow Man
• Biography and Facts (Spanish)
• Biography and Photos (Russian)

John Maxwell Coetzee
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)
Essays
(1988) • Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992) • (1996) • The Lives of Animals (1999) • (2001)
Autobiographical works
Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) • Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002)

Man Booker Prize Winners for Fiction
1960-1969	P. H. Newby (1969)
1970-1979	Bernice Rubens (1970) • V. S. Naipaul (1971) • John Berger (1972) • James Gordon Farrell (1973) • Nadine Gordimer / Stanley Middleton (1974) • Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) • David Storey (1976) • Paul Scott (1977) • Iris Murdoch (1978) • Penelope Fitzgerald (1979)
1980-1989	William Golding (1980) • Salman Rushdie (1981) • Thomas Keneally (1982) • John Maxwell Coetzee (1983) • Anita Brookner (1984) • Keri Hulme (1985) • Kingsley Amis (1986) • Penelope Lively (1987) • Peter Carey (1988) • Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
1990-1999	A. S. Byatt (1990) • Ben Okri (1991) • Michael Ondaatje / Barry Unsworth (1992) • Roddy Doyle (1993) • James Kelman (1994) • Pat Barker (1995) • Graham Swift (1996) • Arundhati Roy (1997) • Ian McEwan (1998) • John Maxwell Coetzee (1999)
2000-2010	Margaret Atwood (2000) • Peter Carey (2001) • Yann Martel (2002) • DBC Pierre (2003) • Alan Hollinghurst (2004) • John Banville (2005) • Kiran Desai (2006) • Anne Enright (2007)

Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates
V. S. Naipaul (2001) • Imre Kertész (2002) • John Maxwell Coetzee (2003) • Elfriede Jelinek (2004) • Harold Pinter (2005) • Orhan Pamuk (2006) • Doris Lessing (2007)
Complete roster | (1901–1925) | (1926–1950) | (1951–1975) | (1976–2000) | (2001–2025)

Persondata
NAME	Coetzee, John Maxwell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Contemporary South African novelist, translator and academic (now living in Australia), won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature
DATE OF BIRTH	9 February, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH	Cape Town, South Africa
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

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