J. M. Coetzee Wins the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the 2003 The Nobel Prize in Literature to the South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider".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. In 1999 Coetzee became the first author to be twice awarded the Booker Prize, now for his novel Disgrace, in which the plot mainly takes place on a remote farm in South Africa. 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.
J. M. Coetzee is Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
The complete Nobel Foundation Press Release, announcing the award, is available online.