J. M. Coetzee

John Maxwell Coetzee
(source: Adelaide News)
no copyright infringement intended

Born in Cape Town, moving through the years across most of the English speaking part of the world, in Worcester, London, Bracknell, Austin, Buffalo, again in Cape Town, eventually settled in Adelaide; computer programmer for IBM and ICT sometime in the 1960's; Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003; inarguably the most celebrated and decorated living English-language author (Richard Poplak in Daily Maverick); for Isidore Diala, these are three of South Africa's most distinguished white writers, all with definite anti-apartheid commitment: Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer and André Brink ; in some of his books blending fiction with elements of fictionalized autobiography; politically siding on the left without being part of the left (because, there is no longer a left worth speaking of, and a language of the left); involved in the anti-Vietnam War protests from the end of the 1960's; vocal critic of animal cruelty and advocating the animal rights, criticizing the contemporary anti-terrorism laws due to his commitment for democracy and human rights.

(source: wiki)

Julia Alvarez considers mandatory to read him in your forties, as it would resonate best to your experience and all; then how would it be in my seventies (Coetzee is now seventy five, by the way); I started to read his Foe.

• The Five Most Important Books for Julia

(A Life in Books)