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J.M. Coetzee Cape Town 9 Feb. 1940 • South-African novelist, critic, and translator full text search: the ledge - flash version* *	John Michael Coetzee (he later changed his middle name to 'Maxwell') was born in 1940 in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of a lawyer and a teacher. Coetzee grew up in an English-speaking household and attended English-language schools, but he also spoke Afrikaans, developed from the Dutch language and spoken by most whites in South Africa. He spent most of his childhood near the town of Worcester, about 70 miles outside of Cape Town. Upon completing bachelor's degrees in mathematics and literature at the University of Cape Town, Coetzee moved to London to work as a computer programmer, writing poetry and studying literature in his spare time. In 1965 he came to the United States to pursue a doctorate in literature and linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote his dissertation on Samuel Beckett. Coetzee spent several years teaching in the United States before returning to South Africa in 1971. He served as a professor of literature at the University of Cape Town until he retired in 2002. He is a member of the committee on social thought	at the University of Chicago and research fellow at the University of Adelaide, where he now lives with his partner Dorothy Driver. Coetzee's novels include In the Heart of the Country (1977), Waiting for the Barbarians (1982), Life and Times of Michael K (1983), Disgrace (1999), and Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003). He has also published two memoirs about growing up in South Africa during apartheid, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) and Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II(2002). His fiction has won numerous awards, including the Booker Prize (he is the only author to win twice), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. A noted essayist and scholar, Coetzee has also produced translations of works in Afrikaans, Dutch, French, and German. www.penguinputnam.com
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ON J.M. COETZEE'S BOOKSHELF Watt Samuel Beckett, Written circa 1943, published 1953 Insofar as it has a plot, Watt does for the most part concern a man named Watt, who travels to the manor of Mr Knott and there works for him, engaged in the most mechanical yet convoluted tasks, before leaving and (perhaps) ultimately being institutionalized. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett, 1951 Part II of the Trilogy. The decrepit Malone, bedridden, fills his mind and his remaining time with memories, stories and bitter comment, while waiting for the 'throes'. The novel disintegrates as the protagonist does. The Trial Franz Kafka, 1925P The tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. The Castle Franz Kafka, 1926P The story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home. Crime and Punishment Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky, 1866 Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, commits a random murder without remorse or regret. But gradually he finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. King Lear William Shakespeare, 1605 Tragedy about a rich, proud, and stubborn man who loses everything. The Book of Job Anonymous, ??? The 'Book of Job' has been called the most difficult book of the Bible. The numerous Exegeses of the 'Book of Job' are classic attempts to reconcile the co-existence of evil and God.	BOOKS BY J.M. COETZEE: Disgrace 1999 After an impulsive affair with his student sours, David Lurie retreats to his daughter Lucy's isolated smallholding. For a time, his daughter's influence and the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. He and Lucy become victims of a disturbing attack which brings into relief all their faultlines.	WHAT TO READ AFTER DISGRACE? DOWNHILL ALL THE WAY The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy, 1886 Michael Henchard is an out-of-work hay-trusser who gets drunk at a local fair and impulsively sells his wife Susan and baby daughter. Eighteen years later Susan and her daughter seek him out, only to discover that he has become the most prominent man in Casterbridge. Beyond Sleep Willem Frederik Hermans, 1966 A gripping tale of a man approaching breaking point set beyond the end of the civilised world. The Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe, 1987 One night in the Bronx a millionaire, Sherman McCoy, and his mistress have an accident. The next day a young black man is in the hospital in a coma, as McCoy heads for disaster. SEXUAL 'CRIME' AND PUNISHMENT The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850 The tale of a passionate woman in 17th-century Boston who challenges the system of moral authority and places belief in the higher law of her own heart. The Human Stain Philip Roth, 2000 Coleman Silk has a secret, one that lies at the very core of who he is, and which he has kept hidden from everyone for fifty years. SOUTH AFRICA AND (THE LEGACY OF) APARTHEID The Rights of Desire André Brink, 2000 Ruben Oliver's life is coming adrift from its moorings. Retired, widower, son's emigrating, others' emigrated. Then young Tessa comes knocking, looking for a place to stay. The House Gun Nadine Gordimer, 1997 The orderly life of a white, middle-aged, South-African couple changes for good when their son kills one of his housemates. Casspirs and Camparis Etienne van Heerden, 1991 In the final years before Nelson Mandela's release from prison, many South Africans are faced with difficult choices. A Mouthful of Glass Henk van Woerden, 1998 A short, tough story of an assassin - the man who killed Hendrick Verwoed, the racist prime minister of South Africa, in 1966. The Cardinals Bessie Head, 1962 / 1993 Mouse lacks love and family, but lives for books. A newspaper job opens her eyes to real life. Johnny, a time-worn journalist, offers love and shelter, but at the price of losing her naive view of society. Can she accept that apartheid rules, and form her own loveless history?
	In the Heart of the Country 1977 Stifled by the torpor of colonial South Africa and trapped in a web of reciprocal oppression, a lonely sheep farmer seeks comfort in the arms of a black concubine.
	Elizabeth Costello 2003 Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through an ingenious series of eight formal addresses.
	Life and Times of Michael K 1983 In South Africa, whose civil administration is collapsing under the pressure of years of civil strife, an obscure young gardener named Michael K decides to take his mother on a long march away from the guns towards a new life in the abandoned countryside. But everywhere he goes, the war follows him.
	Age of Iron 1990 In apartheid-era South Africa, a dying woman is led by a black, homeless man on an odyssey through the townships.
	Waiting for the Barbarians 1980 For decades the Magistrate has run the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement, ignoring the impending war between the barbarians and the Empire, whose servant he is. But when the interrogation experts arrive, he is jolted into sympathy with the victims and into a quixotic act of rebellion which lands him in prison, branded as an enemy of the state.
	Foe 1986 Susan Barton finds herself marooned on an island in the Atlantic with an Englishman named Robinson Cruso and his mute (mutilated) slave, Friday. Rescued after a year of Cruso's company, back in England with Friday in tow, she approaches the author Daniel Foe, offering him the story.
	The Master of Petersburg 1994 In 1869, an exiled Russian novelist returns to St Petersburg to collect the effects of his dead stepson, Pavel. But the stepson's incriminating papers have been found by the Tsarist police and the novelist finds himself drawn into an underworld of suspicion, revolution and danger.
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