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John Maxwell Coetzee was born
in Cape Town, South Africa in 1940 to English speaking parents.
He graduated successively with honours degrees in English and
Mathematics from the University of Cape Town and travelled to
England in 1962 to work as a computer programmer whilst doing
research for a thesis on the English novelist Ford Madox Ford.
In 1965 Coetzee entered the graduate school of
the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a PhD in
English, Linguistics, and Germanic languages. His doctoral dissertation
was on the early fiction of Samuel Beckett. For three years Coetzee
was assistant professor of English at the State University of
New York in Buffalo. After an application for permanent residence
in the United States was denied, he returned to South Africa.
From 1972 until 2000 he held a series of positions
at the University of Cape Town, the last of them as Distinguished
Professor of Literature. Between 1984 and 2003, he also taught
frequently in the United States. Coetzee began writing fiction
in 1969. His first book, Dusklands, was published in
South Africa in 1974. In the Heart of the Country won
South Africa’s then principal literary award, the CNA Prize
and was published in Britain and the USA. Waiting for the
Barbarians received international notice. His reputation
was confirmed by Life & Times of Michael K, which
won Britain's Booker Prize. It was followed by Foe, Age of
Iron, The Master of Petersburg and Disgrace, which
again won the Booker Prize. Coetzee has also written two fictionalized
memoirs, Boyhood and Youth, and several collections
of Essays on South Africa as well as being a translator of Dutch
and Afrikaan literature.
In 2002 Coetzee emigrated to Australia where he
holds an honorary position at the University of Adelaide. He won
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. |
