J. M. Coetzee

J.M. Coetzee has produced a literary oeuvre that is notable for confronting apartheid in his birthplace South Africa and, more generally, racism and western morality. After graduating in Mathematics and English Philology in South Africa, he moved to the United States where he obtained a PhD in Linguistics. He has taught Literature in universities in Cape Town, New York, and Adelaide, where he presently resides. He has published fiction, memoirs, and essays, thus creating a vast body of work that places him among the great names of English literature. Before being awarded the Nobel Prize, he was the first writer to win the Booker Prize twice, for Life & Times of Michael K (in Catalan Vida i època de Michael K, 1983, Edicions 62/Literatura Random House) and Disgrace (in Catalan, Desgràcia (1983, Columna/Debolisllo). Also notable among his books are Waiting for the Barbarians (in Catalan, Esperant els bàrbars (1980, Proa/Random House), Elizabeth Costello (2003, Random House), Diary of a Bad Year (in Catalan, Diari d’un mal any (2007, Edicions 62/Debolsillo), and the trilogy Boyhood (in Catalan, Infantesa, 1997, Edicions 62/Literatura Random House), Youth (in Catalan, Joventut, 2002, Edicions 62/Literatura Random House), and Summertime (in Catalan Temps d’estiu 2009, Edicions 62/Literatura Random House). His most recent novels are The Death of Jesus (in Spanish La muerte de Jesús 2019, Literatura Random House) and The Pole (in Catalan, El polonès, 2022, Edicions 62/El Hilo de Ariadna). Both of them were first published in its Spanish translation and priority was given to its distribution in Latin America. Coetzee thereby introduced a practice that clearly expresses his commitment to confront Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony and the distribution spaces of the global north.