J. M. Coetzee

Born 9 Feb 1940

From Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa · Nationality: South Africa, Australia · Writes fiction and nonfiction

John Maxwell Coetzee FRSL OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language.

Quotes

“The new men of Empire are the ones who believe in fresh starts, new chapters, clean pages; I struggle on with the old story, hoping that before it is finished it will reveal to me why it was that I thought it worth the trouble.”
Waiting for the Barbarians, p.24
“There seemed nothing to do but live.”
Life & Times of Michael K
“Seen from too remote a vantage, life begins to lose its particularity. All shipwrecks become the same shipwreck, all castaways the same castaway, sunburnt, lonely, clad in the skins of the beast he has slain.”
Foe
“The world is full of islands, said Cruso once. His words ring truer every day.”
Foe
“As for September 11, let us not too easily grant the Americans possession of that date on the calendar. Like May 1 or July 14 or December 25, September 11 may seem full of significance to some people, while to other people it is just another day.”
Dagens Nyheter interview with David Attwell December 8, 2003

Quotes from Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Books by J. M. Coetzee in order

Books by J. M. Coetzee in the order they were published, from Dusklands (1974) to Death of Jesus (2019).

Books like Crime and Punishment

If you like J. M. Coetzee

Authors readers of J. M. Coetzee often like, from our AI-written notes

Nadine GordimerAnother South African novelist who wrote about apartheid, colonialism and white South African identity, and also won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Franz KafkaShares the parable-like, morally ambiguous narratives and the sense of an individual confronting an opaque system.
Samuel BeckettShares the spare, stripped-down prose and interest in the failure of language and the human condition.
Fyodor DostoevskyThe subject of The Master of Petersburg, and a writer whose interests in guilt, faith and suffering are close to Coetzee's.
Kazuo IshiguroWrites restrained, unreliable first-person narrators who conceal their guilt, a quality many Coetzee readers also appreciate.
W. G. SebaldMixes fiction, essay and history in a melancholy, reflective style about memory, violence and loss.

J. M. Coetzee

Quotes

Books by J. M. Coetzee in order

Lists with books by J. M. Coetzee

If you like J. M. Coetzee