Coetzee was born inCape Town,Cape Province,Union of South Africa, on 9 February 1940 toAfrikaner parents.[2][3] His father, Zacharias Coetzee (1912–1988), was an occasional attorney and government employee, and his mother, Vera Coetzee (née Wehmeyer; 1904–1986), a schoolteacher.[4][5] His father was often absent, and enlisted in the army and fought in World War II to avoid being prosecuted on a criminal charge. Vera and her children therefore relied on financial and other support from relatives.[6] The family mainly spoke English at home, but Coetzee spokeAfrikaans with other relatives.[4]
He is descended from 17th-century Dutch immigrants to South Africa,[6][7] on his father's side, and from Dutch, German, and Polish immigrants through his mother.[8][9] His mother's grandfather was a Pole, referred to by the Germanised form, Balthazar du Biel, but actually born Balcer Dubiel in 1844 in the village ofCzarnylas (Schwarzwald), in a part of Poland annexed byPrussia. His ancestry caused a lifelong preoccupation with Polish literature and culture, culminating in his 2022 novelThe Pole.[10]
Coetzee spent most of his early life in Cape Town and inWorcester, a town in the Cape Province (modern-dayWestern Cape), as recounted in his fictionalised memoir,Boyhood (1997). His family moved to Worcester when he was eight, after his father lost his government job.[5] Coetzee attended St. Joseph's College, aCatholic school in the Cape Town suburbRondebosch.[11] He studied mathematics and English at theUniversity of Cape Town (UCT), receiving a Bachelor of Arts with honours in English in 1960 and a Bachelor of Arts with honours in mathematics in 1961.[12][13]
Coetzee moved to theUnited Kingdom in 1962 and worked as acomputer programmer forIBM inLondon and ICT (International Computers and Tabulators) inBracknell, staying until 1965.[4] His experiences in England are recounted inYouth (2002), his second volume of fictionalised memoirs.
From as early as 1968, Coetzee sought permanent residence in the U.S., a process that was finally unsuccessful, in part due to his involvement inprotests against the war in Vietnam. In March 1970, he was one of 45 faculty members who occupied the university'sHayes Hall and were arrested for criminal trespass.[21] The charges against them were dropped in 1971.[4]
In 1972, Coetzee returned to South Africa and was appointed lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at theUniversity of Cape Town. He was promoted to senior lecturer andassociate professor before becoming Professor of General Literature in 1984. In 1994, Coetzee became Arderne Professor in English, and in 1999 he was appointed Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Humanities. Upon retirement in 2002, he was awardedemeritus status.[22][23]
After relocating to Adelaide, Australia,[8] Coetzee was made an honoraryresearch fellow at the English Department of theUniversity of Adelaide,[25] where his partner, Dorothy Driver,[12] is a fellow academic.[26] As of November 2023[update], Coetzee is listed as University Professorial Research Fellow within the School of Humanities.[27]
Coetzee's first novel wasDusklands (1974), and he has published a novel about every three years since. He has also written autobiographical novels, short fiction, translations fromDutch andAfrikaans, and numerous essays and works of criticism. His latest work isThe Pole and Other Stories (2023). He has not written a novel set in South Africa since 2009.[28]
According toJames Meek, writing inThe Guardian in 2009: "SinceDisgrace, the nature of Coetzee's project has changed. He has moved away from naturalistic, storytelling fiction towards other forms—essays, polemic and memoir, or a composite of all three in a fictional framework... [he] seems to be taking less interest in the storytelling keel of his books and is inviting us instead to listen in to an intimate conversation he is having with himself, in the form of multiple alter egos". These alter egos include a character type represented by the magistrate inWaiting for the Barbarians and David Lurie inDisgrace; another is a female proxy for himself, the "elderly, scholarly, world-weary novelist" Elizabeth Costello, a recurring character in his works; and the last is Coetzee himself, writing autobiographically. Meek also remarks that Coetzee is harsh on himself, in the characters who represent him in some ways.[29]
Relating to his developing interest inArgentine literature in the 2010s, Coetzee's trilogy of novelsThe Childhood of Jesus,The Schooldays of Jesus, andThe Death of Jesus reflect his preoccupation with and evolution of his ideas and views on language ("I do not like the way in which English is taking over the world... I don't like the arrogance that this situation breeds in its native speakers. Therefore, I do what little I can to resist the hegemony of the English language"). All three were translated into Spanish, with the last published in Spanish translation first. He also became involved with theLiteratures of the South project during this period (2015).[30]
The Pole was first published in Spanish asEl polaco, in Argentina, in 2022, and in English the next year.[28]
Coetzee is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in theEnglish language.[4][6][12][22] He has received numerous awards throughout his career, although he has a reputation for avoiding award ceremonies.[31]
Summertime, named on the 2009 longlist,[35] was an early favourite to win Coetzee an unprecedented third Booker Prize.[36][37] It made the shortlist, but lost to bookmakers' favouriteWolf Hall, by Mantel.[38] Coetzee was also longlisted in 2003 forElizabeth Costello and in 2005 forSlow Man.
On 2 October 2003, theSwedish Academy announced that Coetzee had been chosen as that year's recipient of theNobel Prize in Literature, making him the fourth African writer to be so honoured[40] and the second South African, afterNadine Gordimer.[41] When awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy stated that Coetzee "in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider".[42] The press release for the award also cited his "well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance", while focusing on the moral nature of his work.[42] The prize ceremony was held inStockholm on 10 December 2003.[41]
In 1984, Coetzee received an Honorary Fellow Award at the University of Cape Town.[20] He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society of Literature (FRSL) in 1988.[51] In 2001 he won the Outstanding Alumnus award at the University of Texas.[20] In 2004, he was made Honorary Fellow of theAustralian Academy of the Humanities.[20]
Coetzee is patron of theJ. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice (JMCCCP), a research centre and cultural hub founded at the University of Adelaide in 2015. The centre runs workshops with the aim of providing "a stimulating environment for emerging and established writers, scholars and musicians". Coetzee's work provides particular inspiration to encourage engagement with social and political issues, as well as music. The centre was established in 2015.[71]
In November 2014, Coetzee was honoured with a three-dayacademic conference, "JM Coetzee in the World", in Adelaide. It was called "the culmination of an enormous collaborative effort and the first event of its kind in Australia" and "a reflection of the deep esteem in which John Coetzee is held by Australian academia".[72]
According toFred Pfeil, Coetzee,André Brink andBreyten Breytenbach were at "the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement within Afrikaner literature and letters".[75] On accepting the Jerusalem Prize in 1987, Coetzee spoke of the limitations of art in South African society, whose structures had resulted in "deformed and stunted relations between human beings" and "a deformed and stunted inner life". He added, "South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less than fully human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison", and called on the South African government to abandon its apartheid policy.[49] The scholar Isidore Diala wrote that Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, and Brink are "three of South Africa's most distinguished white writers, all with definite anti-apartheid commitment".[76]
It has been argued that Coetzee's 1999 novelDisgrace allegorises South Africa'sTruth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).[77] Asked about his views on the TRC, 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".[78]
After his Australian citizenship ceremony, Coetzee said: "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."[25] When he moved to Australia, Coetzee cited the South African government's lax attitude tocrime in that country as a reason, leading to a spat withThabo Mbeki, who said, "South Africa is not only a place of rape", referencing Coetzee'sDisgrace.[79] In 1999, theAfrican National Congress's submission to aSouth African Human Rights Commission investigation into racism in the media said thatDisgrace depicted racist stereotypes.[80] When Coetzee won the Nobel Prize, Mbeki congratulated him "on behalf of the South African nation and indeed the continent of Africa".[81]
Coetzee has never specified any political orientation nor overtly criticisedapartheid, though he has alluded to politics in his work, especially the part that language plays in supporting the political and social structures of colonialism and nationalism. South African authorNadine Gordimer suggested that Coetzee had "a revulsion against all political and revolutionary solutions", and he has been both praised for his condemnation of racism in his writing and criticised for not explicitly denouncing apartheid.[28]
Writing about his past in thethird person, Coetzee wrote inDoubling the Point:
Politically, theraznochinets can go either way. But during his student years he, this person, this subject, my subject, steers clear of the right. As a child inWorcester he has seen enough of the Afrikaner right, enough of its rant, to last him a lifetime. In fact, even before Worcester, he has perhaps seen more of cruelty and violence than should have been allowed to a child. So as a student, he moves on the fringes of the left without being part of the left. Sympathetic to the human concerns of the left, he is alienated, when the crunch comes, by its language—by all political language, in fact.[82]
Asked about the latter part of this quote in an interview, Coetzee answered: "There is no longer a left worth speaking of, and a language of the left. The language of politics, with its new economistic bent, is even more repellent than it was 15 years ago".[78]
In May 2016, Coetzee attended thePalestine Festival of Literature; on the closing night, he gave a brief speech, in which he said: "I was born and brought up in South Africa and so naturally people ask me what I see of South Africa in the present situation in Palestine.Using the word 'apartheid' to describe the way things are here I've never found to be a productive step. Like using the word 'genocide' to describe what happened in Turkey in the 1920s, using the word 'apartheid' diverts one into the inflamed semantic wrangle, which cuts short the opportunities of analysis." But, he added, "InJerusalem and in theWest Bank—to speak only of Jerusalem and the West Bank—we've seen a system of enforced segregation based on religion and ethnicity, put in place by an exclusive, self-defined group to consolidate the colonial conquest, in particular to maintain and, indeed, extend its hold on the land and its natural resources. Draw your own conclusions."[84]
In 2005, Coetzee criticisedcontemporary anti-terrorism laws as resembling those of South Africa's apartheid regime: "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."[85] The main character in Coetzee's 2007 bookDiary of a Bad Year, which has been described as blending "memoir with fiction, academic criticism with novelistic narration" and refusing "to recognize the border that has traditionally separatedpolitical theory from fictional narrative",[86] shares similar concerns about the policies ofJohn Howard andGeorge W. Bush.[87]
In recent years, Coetzee has become a vocal critic ofcruelty to animals and an advocate ofanimal rights.[88] In a speech given on his behalf byHugo Weaving in Sydney on 22 February 2007, Coetzee railed against the modernanimal husbandry industry.[89] The speech was forVoiceless, an Australian nonprofit animal protection organization of which Coetzee became a patron in 2004.[90] Coetzee's fiction has similarly engaged with animal cruelty and animal welfare, especiallyThe Lives of Animals,Disgrace,Elizabeth Costello, andThe Old Woman and the Cats. He is avegetarian.[91]
In 2008, at the behest ofJohn Banville, who alerted him to the matter, Coetzee wrote toThe Irish Times of his opposition toTrinity College Dublin's use ofvivisection on animals for scientific research. He wrote: "I support the sentiments expressed by John Banville. There is no good reason—in fact, there has never been any good reason, scientific or pedagogical—to require students to cut up living animals. Trinity College brings shame on itself by continuing with the practice."[92] Nearly nine years later, when TCD's continued (and, indeed, increasing) practice of vivisection featured in the news, a listener to theRTÉ Radio 1 weekday afternoon showLiveline pointed out that Banville had previously raised the matter but been ignored. Banville then telephonedLiveline to call the practice "absolutely disgraceful" and recalled how his and Coetzee's efforts to intervene had been to no avail: "I was passing by the front gates of Trinity one day and there was a group of mostly young women protesting and I was interested. I went over and I spoke to them and they said that vivisection experiments were being carried out in the college. This was a great surprise to me and a great shock, so I wrote a letter of protest toThe Irish Times. Some lady professor from Trinity wrote back essentially saying Mr. Banville should stick to his books and leave us scientists to our valuable work." Asked if he received any other support for his stance in the letter he sent toThe Irish Times, Banville replied, "No. I became entirely dispirited and I thought, 'Just shut up, John. Stay out of it because I'm not going to do any good'. If I had done any good I would have kept it on. I mean, I got John Coetzee—you know, the famous novelist J. M. Coetzee—I got him to write a letter toThe Irish Times. I asked a lot of people."[93]
Coetzee wanted to be a candidate in the2014 European Parliament election for the DutchParty for the Animals, but the Dutch election board rejected his candidacy, arguing that candidates had to prove legal residence in the European Union.[94]
In the early 1960s, while in London,[30] Coetzee studiedSpanish,[28] and from 2015 to 2018, Coetzee was a director of a biannual seminar series on the Literatures of the South at theUniversidad Nacional de San Martín in Argentina.[28][95] This involved writers and literary figures from Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America.[96][97] The aim of the seminars, one observer remarked, was "to develop comparative perspectives on the literature" and journalism of the three areas, "to establish new intellectual networks, and to build a corpus of translated works from across the South through collaborative publishing ventures".[98] He developed an interest inArgentine literature, and curated a series for the publishing house El Hilo de Ariadna, which includesTolstoy'sThe Death of Ivan Ilyich,Samuel Beckett'sWatt, andPatrick White'sThe Solid Mandala. His trilogy of novelsThe Childhood of Jesus,The Schooldays of Jesus, andThe Death of Jesus reflect his preoccupation and evolution of ideas and views on language.[30]
At the same time, he was involved in a research project in Australia, Other Worlds: Forms of World Literature, for which he led a theme on "Everyday Pleasures" that is also focused on the literatures of the South.[99] Coetzee chose to publishThe Schooldays of Jesus andThe Death of Jesus in Australia, andThe Pole in Argentina, before they were published in the U.K. or the U.S. In an interview withEl Pais, he said, "the symbolism of publishing in the South before the North is important to me".[28][100]
When asked in 2015 to address unofficial Iranian translations of foreign works — Iran does not recognize international copyright agreements — Coetzee stated his disapproval of the practice on moral grounds and wished to have it sent to journalistic organisations in that country.[101]
Scenes from Provincial Life (2011),ISBN1-84655-485-3; an edited single volume ofBoyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life,Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II, andSummertime
The Lives of Animals, delivered for The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Princeton, 1997
"A Word from J. M. Coetzee", address read byHugo Weaving at the opening of the exhibition "Voiceless: I Feel Therefore I Am" byVoiceless: The Animal Protection Institute, 22 February 2007, Sherman Galleries, Sydney, Australia
Coetzee was a key figure in the establishment ofOak Tree Press'sFirst Chapter Series in 2006.[102] The series produces limited-edition signed works by literary greats to raise money for the child victims and orphans of theAfrican HIV/AIDS crisis.[103]
Coetzee has mentioned a number of literary figures who, like him, have tried "to transcend their national and historical contexts":Rainer Maria Rilke,Jorge Luis Borges,Samuel Beckett,James Joyce,T. S. Eliot,Ezra Pound, andZbigniew Herbert—outsiders to Western culture who moved countries and/or wrote in different languages.[28] He has said, "as a child, as a young man, as a student, I had absolutely no doubt that access to the English language was liberating me from the narrow world view of the Afrikaner", and "I have a good command of English, spoken and written, but more and more it feels to me like the kind of command that a foreigner might have".[30] He has written about his feeling of being an "outsider", such as his experience of being a colonial when living in London, which he writes about inYouth, and characters in his novels have sometimes been outsiders.[14]
On 6 March 2006, Coetzee became an Australian citizen,[25][104] and it has been argued that his "acquired 'Australianness' is deliberately adopted and stressed" by Australians.[72]
Coetzee is generally reluctant to speak about himself and his work, but has written about himself in several autobiographical novels (Boyhood,Youth, andSummertime).[14] He has been described as reclusive, avoiding publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person.[79][105] The South African writerRian Malan, in oft-quoted words from an article published in theNew Statesman in 1999, called Coetzee "a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication", and reported—based on hearsay—that he rarely laughed or even spoke.[106][107] Asked about these comments in an email interview, Coetzee replied: "I have met Rian Malan only once in my life. He does not know me and is not qualified to talk about my character".[108][109]
Coetzee married Philippa Jubber in 1963.[110] They divorced in 1980.[5] They have a son, Nicolas (1966–1989), and a daughter, Gisela (born 1968).[110] Nicolas died in 1989 at the age of 23 after accidentally falling from the balcony of hisJohannesburg apartment.[5][110][111][112][113][114]
Coetzee's younger brother, the journalistDavid Coetzee, died in 2010.[115]
^abcdPrice, Jonathan (April 2012)."J. M. Coetzee". Emory University. Retrieved12 January 2014.
^abcO'Callaghan, Billy (22 June 2013)."Trying to unwrap the great Coetzee enigma".Irish Examiner.His Cape ancestry begins as early as the 17th century with the arrival from Holland of one Dirk Couché... (the origin of the name Coetzee)
^Easton, John; Friedman, Allan; Harms, William; Koppes, Steve; Sanders, Seth (23 September 2003)."Faculty receive DSPs, named professorships".University of Chicago Chronicle. Retrieved2 August 2009.
^Coetzee, J.M. (15 April 1984)."How I learned about America - and Africa - in Texas".The New York Times Web Archive. Retrieved26 November 2023.April 15, 1984, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Correction Appended Section 7; Page 9, Column 1; Book Review Desk
^Richmond, Chris (2007)."John M. Coetzee". In Badge, Peter (ed.).Nobel Faces: A Gallery of Nobel Prize Winners. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH. pp. 428–429.ISBN978-3-527-40678-4. Retrieved12 January 2014.
^J. G. Farrell won the Booker Prize in 1973 and theLost Man Booker Prize in 2010 for novels published in 1970 that were ineligible at the time due to a change in the rules. The Lost Man Booker Prize was awarded by a public vote and is not comparable with the regular prize.
^"Commencement 2010".AUP Magazine. American University of Paris. 15 October 2010. Archived fromthe original on 16 January 2013. Retrieved17 November 2012.
^Pfeil, Fred (21 June 1986)."Sexual Healing".The Nation. Retrieved21 February 2011.(subscription required)
^Diala, Isidore (2002). "Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, and André Brink: Guilt, expiation, and the reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa".Journal of Modern Literature.25 (2): 50–68 [51].doi:10.1353/jml.2003.0004.S2CID162314336.
^Poyner, Jane (2000). "Truth and Reconciliation in JM Coetzee's Disgrace (novel)".Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa.5 (2):67–77.doi:10.1080/18125440008565972.S2CID144742571.
^Scanlan, Margaret (1997). "Incriminating documents: Nechaev and Dostoevsky in J. M. Coetzee'sThe Master of St Petersburg".Philological Quarterly.76 (4):463–477.
^Pearlman, Mickey (18 September 2005). "J.M. Coetzee again sheds light on the 'black gloom' of isolation".Star Tribune. p. 14F.
