Biography: J.M. Coetzee

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION:
J.M. Coetzee was born John Maxwell Coetzee in Cape Town, South Africa on February 9, 1940. English was the primary language that Coetzee spoke at home, but he learned Afrikaans while in school and socializing with other family members and friends. After completing his primary and secondary education in 1957, Coetzee started at the University of Cape Town and graduated in both 1960 and 1961, earning successive honor degrees in English and mathematics. He moved to London, England, UK in 1962, working as a computer programmer for IBM until 1965, at which began a graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1968 he graduated with a PhD in English, linguistics, and Germanic languages.


ACADEMIC CAREER:
Prior to receiving his PhD, Coetzee received an honary Master of Arts degree from the University of Cape Town in 1963 for his dissertation on the novels of Ford Madox Ford. While at the University of Texas, J.M. Coetzee wrote his disseration for his doctoral studies on the early fiction of Samuel Beckett.


From 1968 to 1971, Coetzee worked as an assistant professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo. However, Coetzee's application for permanent residency in the United States was denied due to his involvement in Anti-Vietnam protests, so he returned to South Africa and taught English literature at the University of Cape Town from 1972 until 2001. In 1983 he was promoted to Professor of General Literature and from 1999-2001 he served as Distinguished Professor of Literature. During his tenure at the Unviersity of Cape Town, J.M. Coetzee frequently returned to the United States, teaching at various universities across the country, including Harvard, Standford, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Chicago.


In 2002, Coetzee retired from University of Cape Town and emmigrated to Adelaide, Australia upon where he was made an honorary research fellow for the English Department at the University of Adelaide.


LITERARY WORKS:
Listed in order of publication date:
Duskland. – Johannesburg : Ravan Press, 1974. – Contents: The Vietnam project ; The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee
In the Heart of the Country. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1977. – Published in the USA as From the Heart of the Country
Waiting for the Barbarians. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1980
Life and Times of Michael K. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1983
Foe. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1986
White Writing : on the Culture of Letters in South Africa. – New Haven : Yale Univ. Press, 1988
Age of Iron. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1990
Doubling the Point : Essays and Interviews. – Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univ. Press, 1992
The Master of Petersburg. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1994
Giving Offense : Essays on Censorship. – Chicago : Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996
Boyhood : Scenes from Provincial Life. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1997
What is Realism? – Bennington, Vt. : Bennington College, 1997
Disgrace. – London : Secker & Warburg, 1999
The Lives of Animals / edited and introduced by Amy Gutmann. – Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press, 1999
The Humanities in Africa = Die Geisteswissenschaften in Afrika. – München : Carl Friedrich von Siemens-Stiftung, 2001
Stranger Shores : Essays, 1986–1999. – London : Secker & Warburg, 2001
Youth. – London : Secker & Warburg, 2002
Elizabeth Costello : Eight Lessons. – London : Secker & Warburg, 2003
Lecture and Speech of Acceptance, upon the Award of the Nobel Prize, Delivered in Stockholm in December 2003. – New York : Penguin Books, 2004.
Slow Man. - Secker & Warburg, 2005 (sept.)
Diary of a Bad Year. – London : Harvill, 2007
Summertime : Scenes from a Provincial Life. – London : Harvill Secker, 2009


J.M. Coetzee has received numerous awards for his literary works, including the Booker Prize, for which he is the only author to have received the award twice: Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999). He has also awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individaul in Society in 1987, and in 2003, Coetzee recieved the Nobel Prize for Literature. 


PERSONAL LIFE:
J.M. Coetzee was 8 years old when the apartheid took effect in South Africa, an aspect that has affected him greatly. Throughout his life, Coetzee has been an avid supporter of the anti-apartheid movement, particularly in terms of literature. His personal views of the apartheid and oppression in South Africa greatly affected his work and his political views worldwide- including his involvement in US anti-Vietnam protests and, currently, his support in animal rights and the newly emerging animal studies genre.


Coetzee married Phillipa Jubber in 1963 and they had two children together, Nicholas (1966) and Gisela (1968). They divorced in 1980.


Currently, Coetzee resides in with his partner Dorothy Driver in Adelaide, Austrailia.


Reference List

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2003/coetzee.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._Coetzee








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