J. M. Coetzee

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Lore & Background

Coetzee was born on 9 February 1940 in Cape Town, Union of South Africa. His father, Zacharias Coetzee, was an occasional attorney and government employee who enlisted in the army and fought in World War II to avoid being prosecuted on a criminal charge. His mother, Vera Coetzee (née Wehmeyer), was a schoolteacher. The family mainly spoke English at home, but Coetzee spoke Afrikaans with other relatives. His mother's grandfather was a Pole, born Balcer Dubiel in 1844 in the village of Czarnylas (Schwarzwald), in a part of Poland annexed by Prussia—this ancestry caused a lifelong preoccupation with Polish literature and culture, culminating in his 2022 novel *The Pole*. Coetzee studied mathematics and English at the University of Cape Town, earning a Bachelor of Arts with honours in English in 1960 and a Bachelor of Arts with honours in mathematics in 1961. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1962, working as a computer programmer for IBM in London and ICT in Bracknell until 1965. In 1963, the University of Cape Town awarded him a Master of Arts for his thesis *The Works of Ford Madox Ford with Particular Reference to the Novels*. In 1965, he went to the University of Texas at Austin, where his PhD dissertation was a computer-aided stylistic analysis of the English prose of Samuel Beckett. He taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1968 to 1971, where he began his first novel *Dusklands*. In March 1970, he was one of 45 faculty members who occupied Hayes Hall and were arrested for criminal trespass; charges were dropped in 1971. After returning to South Africa in 1972, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Cape Town, becoming Professor of General Literature in 1984, Arderne Professor in English in 1994, and Distinguished Professor in 1999. He retired in 2002 with emeritus status. In Adelaide, he became an honorary research fellow at the English Department of the University of Adelaide, and as of November 2023 is listed as University Professorial Research Fellow within the School of Humanities.

Reader's Guide

Coetzee's first novel was *Dusklands* (1974), and he has published a novel about every three years since. He has also written autobiographical novels, short fiction, translations from Dutch and Afrikaans, and numerous essays and works of criticism. His latest work is *The Pole and Other Stories* (2023). He has not written a novel set in South Africa since 2009. According to James Meek in *The Guardian* (2009), Coetzee has moved away from naturalistic storytelling toward essays, polemic, and memoir, often using alter egos including the magistrate in *Waiting for the Barbarians*, David Lurie in *Disgrace*, and the recurring character Elizabeth Costello. Coetzee was the first writer to be awarded the Booker Prize twice: for *Life & Times of Michael K* in 1983 and for *Disgrace* in 1999. *Summertime* (2009) was shortlisted for a third Booker but lost to *Wolf Hall*. On 2 October 2003, the Swedish Academy announced Coetzee as the Nobel Prize in Literature recipient, stating he 'in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider' and citing his 'well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance'. He also won the CNA Literary Award three times (1977, 1980, 1983), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for *Waiting for the Barbarians*, the *Sunday Express* Book of the Year for *Age of Iron*, *The Irish Times* International Fiction Prize for *The Master of Petersburg* (1995), the Prix Femina étranger, two Commonwealth Writers' Prizes (for *Master of St Petersburg* in 1995 and *Disgrace* in 2000), and the 1987 Jerusalem Prize. In 2005, the South African government awarded him the Order of Mapungubwe (gold class). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1988 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2006.

Did You Know?

• Coetzee's father enlisted in the army and fought in World War II to avoid being prosecuted on a criminal charge.
• His mother's grandfather was a Pole named Balcer Dubiel, born in 1844 in the village of Czarnylas (Schwarzwald), in a part of Poland annexed by Prussia.
• Coetzee's PhD dissertation was a computer-aided stylistic analysis of the English prose of Samuel Beckett.
• In March 1970, Coetzee was one of 45 faculty members arrested for criminal trespass after occupying Hayes Hall at the State University of New York at Buffalo in protest against the Vietnam War.
• Coetzee's novel *The Pole* was first published in Spanish as *El polaco* in Argentina in 2022, and in English the next year.