Coetzee gives voice to SA

2003-10-02 16:12

Johannesburg - JM Coetzee, who won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, is considered one of South Africa's finest writers whose works give voice to the anguish of his home country.

John Maxwell Coetzee, who now lives permanently in Australia, followed in the footsteps of South African Nadine Gordimer who won the coveted award in 1991 and four other South Africans who have been awarded Nobels.

"A fundamental theme in Coetzees novels involves the values and conduct resulting from South Africas apartheid system, which, in his view, could arise anywhere," the Nobel committee noted.

Coetzee has received a string of international awards, but is known to live in solitude and even declined to travel to London after making history by being twice awarded the prestigious Booker Prize.

Oddly enough, Coetzee has a small readership in South Africa.

"I don't think the majority of South Africans know who he is," said David Attwell of the University of Witwatersrand, a specialist on Coetzee's works.

Highly respected man

"He is highly respected in academic circles and he is regarded as South Africa's finest novelist, but we have a very small readership... even amongst those who are literate, very few of them are serious readers of literature."

His most recent novel, "Elizabeth Costello", is a collection of stories about a ficticious Australian writer who is a public intellectual.

When the heroine is asked to share her beliefs, she states: "It's not for me to interrogate, to judge what is given me. I merely write down the words and then test them, test their soundness, to make sure I have heard right."

Coetzee was born on February 9, 1940, and spent most of his childhood in Cape Town and Worcester, a scenic Western Cape town northeast of the South African harbour city.

His parents supported the liberal South African party of General Jan Smuts, who opposed the staunch Afrikaner nationalists who came to power in South Africa in 1948.

Michael Marais, who wrote his doctorate on Coetzee, said he received a bilingual upbringing which enabled him to depict Afrikaans and English characters with equal ability, "an uncommon occurrence in South African literature which, as part of the legacy of a divided society, is riddled with ethnic stereotypes".

Childhood experiences played a role

Marais believed Coetzee's childhood experiences played an important role in the choice of settings for his novels later in his life.

His fascination with the semi-desert Karoo landscape, where he spent school holidays on his uncle's farm, probably set the scene for the novel that garnered his first Booker Prize in 1984, "Life and Times of Micheal K".

The story captured the tensions of a ravaged country through the lense of a mentally disabled black man.

Coetzee attended the University of Cape Town, where he completed degrees in mathematics and English. In 1965, he enrolled at the University of Texas in Austin where he completed a doctorate in linguistics and then spent three years teaching at State University of New York at Buffalo.

Attwell believed events during his stay in New York were life-changing.

Coetzee was arrested while taking part in anti-Vietnam war demonstrations on campus, forcing him to abandon attempts to get permanent residence in the United States and return to South Africa.

Engaged with South Africa

"This was the event that made him write the kind of novels about South Africa. Upon his return he had no option but to engage with South Africa and its colonial history," Attwell said.

He received the Booker Prize for the second time for his 1999 novel "Disgrace", set in post-apartheid South Africa. The book is an account of a South African professor in a midlife crisis whose daughter gets raped while he visits her on her farm.

It deals with many current plights in South Africa - land ownership, crime, rape, lack of police protection and racial divides.

"The novel sparked public controversy. Its representation of South Africa is quite bleak and it was even discussed by cabinet members (in submissions on racism) which is actually quite rare," said Attwell.

Coetzee married South African Phillipa Jubber in 1963 and the couple divorced in the 1980s. He had two children, a daughter Gisela, born in 1968, and a son, Nicholas, who died in an acccident at the age of 23.

He retired as English professor from Cape Town University in January 2002 and now lives in Adelaide, Australia.

- SAPA