John Maxwell Coetzee was born in 1940 in Cape Town in South Africa.

Though his background is both German and English, Coetzee's parents sent him to an English school as a result of which he grew up using English as his first language.

At the beginning of the 1960s he moved to England where he worked initially as a computer programmer. He then studied literature in the United States of America and went on to teach literature and English at the State University of New York at Buffalo up until 1983.

In 1984 he became Professor of English Literature at the University of Cape Town. In 2002 he moved to Australia, where he is attached to the University of Adelaide.

Coetzee made his debut as a writer of fiction in 1974. His international breakthrough came in 1980 with the novel Waiting for the Barbarians. He was awarded the Booker Prize in the United Kingdom for Life and Times of Michael K, 1983.

After 'updating' Robinson Crusoe in the novel Foe, 1986, Coetzee returned to South Africa with Age of Iron, 1990.

Coetzee is the the first author to be awarded the Booker Prize twice – in 1977 for In the Heart of the Country and in 1999 for Disgrace.

A fundamental theme in Coetzee's novels involves the values and conduct resulting from South Africa's apartheid system, which, in his view, could arise anywhere.

Coetzee has also published translations and acted as a literary critic for the New York Review of Books for instance. Coetzee's literary criticism has been published in essay form in journals such as Comparative Literature, the Journal of Literary Semantics and the Journal of Modern Literature and collections have been issued as White Writing, 1998, Doubling the Point, 1992, Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship, 1996, and Stranger Shores: Essays 1986 –1999, 2001.

Coetzee's latest work Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons, 2003, is a mixture of essay and fiction, and some sections have already been included in other published works such as What is Realism? and The Lives of Animals.

Works in English:

Dusklands : [two novellas]. -- Johannesburg : Ravan Press, 1974. -- Contents: The Vietnam project ; The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee

In the Heart of the Country : [novel]. -- London: Secker & Warburg, 1977. -- Published in the USA as From the Heart of the Country

Waiting for the Barbarians : [novel]. -- London : Secker & Warburg, 1980

Life and Times of Michael K : [novel]. -- London : Secker & Warburg, 1983

Foe : [novel]. -- London : Secker & Warburg, 1986

White Writing: on the Culture of Letters in South Africa. -- New Haven : Yale Univ. Press, 1988

Age of Iron : [novel]. -- London : Secker & Warburg, 1990

Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews. -- Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univ. Press, 1992

The Master of Petersburg : [novel]. -- 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 : [novel]. -- London : Secker & Warburg, 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