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Life & Times of Michael K

work by Coetzee
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African literature

In African literature: English

…For Literature in 2003, wrote Life and Times of
Michael K (1983), a story with a blurred hero and an
indistinct historical and geographical background. It
describes a war that could be any war, a country that could be any
country, a bureaucracy that could be any bureaucracy. Through it…
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discussed in biography

In J.M. Coetzee
Life & Times of Michael K (1983), which won the
Booker Prize, concerns the dilemma of a simple man
beset by conditions he can neither comprehend nor
control during a civil war in a future South Africa.
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J.M. Coetzee  Actions

South African author
Also known as: John Maxwell Coetzee
Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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J.M. Coetzee (born February 9, 1940, Cape Town, South Africa) is a South
African novelist, critic, and translator noted for his novels about the effects
of colonization. In 2003, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

J.M. Coetzee

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In full: John Maxwell Coetzee

Born: February 9, 1940, Cape Town, South Africa (age 84)

Awards And Honors: Nobel Prize (2003) • Booker Prize (1999) • Booker Prize (1983)

Notable Works: “Age of Iron” • “Diary of a Bad Year” • “Disgrace” • “Dusklands” •

“Elizabeth Costello” • “Foe” • “Here and Now: Letters 2008-2011” • “… “The Schooldays
...(Show more) of Jesus”

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Coetzee was educated at the University of Cape Town (B.A., 1960; M.A.,
1963) and the University of Texas (Ph.D., 1969). An opponent of apartheid,
he nevertheless returned to live in South Africa, where he taught English at
the University of Cape Town, translated works from the Dutch, and wrote
literary criticism. He also held visiting professorships at a number of
universities.

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Dusklands (1974), Coetzee’s first book, contains two novellas united in their
exploration of colonization, The Vietnam Project (set in the United States in
the late 20th century) and The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee (set in 18th-
century South Africa). In the Heart of the Country (1977; also published as
From the Heart of the Country; filmed as Dust, 1986) is a stream-of-
consciousness narrative of a Boer madwoman, and Waiting for the
Barbarians (1980), set in some undefined borderland, is an examination of
the ramifications of colonization. Life & Times of Michael K (1983), which
won the Booker Prize, concerns the dilemma of a simple man beset by
conditions he can neither comprehend nor control during a civil war in a
future South Africa.

Coetzee continued to explore themes of the colonizer and the colonized in

Foe (1986), his reworking of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Coetzee’s
female narrator comes to new conclusions about power and otherness and
ultimately concludes that language can enslave as effectively as can chains.
In Age of Iron (1990) Coetzee dealt directly with circumstances in
contemporary South Africa, but in The Master of Petersburg (1994) he
made reference to 19th-century Russia (particularly to Fyodor
Dostoyevsky’s work The Devils); both books treat the subject of literature in
society. In 1999, with his novel Disgrace, Coetzee became the first writer to

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 win the Booker Prize twice. After the novel’s publication and an outcry in
South Africa, he moved to Australia, where he was granted citizenship in
2006.

The structure of Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello (2003), a series of “lessons”

(two of which had been published in an earlier volume) in which the
eponymous narrator reflects on a variety of topics, puzzled many readers.
One reviewer proposed that it be considered “non-nonfiction.” Costello
makes a surreal reappearance in Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005), about a recent
amputee’s reluctance to accept his condition. Diary of a Bad Year (2007)
employs a literally split narrative technique, with the text on the page
divided into concurrent storylines, the main story being the musings of an
aging South African writer modeled on Coetzee himself. In The Childhood
of Jesus (2013), a boy and his guardian scour a dystopian world—from
which desire and pleasure have apparently been purged—in search of the
boy’s mother. The first in a trilogy, it was followed by The Schooldays of
Jesus (2016) and The Death of Jesus (2020).

The notably reticent author’s nonfiction books included White Writing: On

the Culture of Letters in South Africa (1988); Doubling the Point: Essays
and Interviews (1992); Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996); and
the autobiographic trilogy Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997),
Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002), and Summertime (2009).
Here and Now: Letters 2008–2011 (2013) is a collection of correspondence
between Coetzee and American novelist Paul Auster. The Good Story:
Exchanges on Truth, Fiction, and Psychotherapy (cowritten with Arabella
Kurtz) was published in 2015.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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