Writer and critic, born in Cape Town, SW South Africa. The political situation in his native country provides him with the base from which to launch his allegories and fables, attacking colonialism and demythologizing historical and contemporary myths of imperialism. His first work of fiction was Dusklands (1974), followed by In the Heart of the Country (1977), Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Life and Times of Michael K (1983, Booker), Foe (1986), Age of Iron (1990), and The Master of Petersburg (1994). In 1999 he became the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice, with Disgrace, and later novels include Elizabeth Costello (2003) and Slow Man (2005). He became professor of English Literature at the University of Cape Town (1984), and in 2002 he moved to Australia where he is attached to the University of Adelaide. His critical work includes White Writing (1988) and Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996). Youth (2002) is an autobiographical work. He received the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Belief may be no more than a battery which one clips into an idea to make it run."| Born: |
9 February 1940 Cape Town, South Africa |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s): | Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Literary Critic, Linguist |
| Nationality: | South African by birth, Australian Citizen |
| Literary movement: | Modernism |
| Influences: | Samuel Beckett, Ford Madox Ford, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Daniel Defoe |
John Maxwell Coetzee (IPA pronunciation: [kutseː]; 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. 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;
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.
On 6 March 2006 Coetzee became an Australian citizen in a ceremony presided over by Australian Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone.
Rian Malan wrote that Coetzee is "a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication.
Achievements and awards
Coetzee has gained many awards throughout his career. 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 &
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 born writer to be so honoured, and the second (as he then was) South African (after Nadine Gordimer).
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."
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