COETZEE, J.M.

born Feb. 9, 1940, Cape Town, S.Af. in full John Michael Coetzee South African novelist, critic, and translator noted for his novels about the effects of apartheid. Coetzee was educated at the University of Cape Town and the University of Texas (Ph.D., 1969). A foe 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. Dusklands (1974), his first book, contains two novellas, The Vietnam Project and The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee. 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) is a parable of South Africa. Life and Times of Michael K (1983), which won the Booker Prize, concerns the dilemma of a man of limited intelligence beset by conditions he can neither comprehend nor control during a civil war in an unnamed country. Although Coetzee denied any conscious connection, critics compared the title character to Franz Kafka's K. in The Trial. Coetzee's Foe (1986) is a philosophical and linguistic twist on Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, demonstrating that language as well as government can contribute to enslavement. Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) is an autobiography. Coetzee also wrote the novels Age of Iron (1990), The Master of Petersburg (1994), and Disgrace (1999) and the nonfiction works Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996) and The Lives of Animals (1999).