SA writer 'crazy' about Aus
2006-08-02 15:00
Johannesburg - Writer and Nobel prize winner JM Coetzee has been extolling the advantages of becoming an Australian citizen, the Witness reported on Wednesday.
Its website said he had become a prime figure in an Australian government advertising campaign aimed at immigrants who live in the country but had not taken out citizenship.
The advert stated that "Australia's spirit and beauty prompted the 2003 Nobel Literature laureate, John M Coetzee, to become an Australian citizen".
Coetzee visited Australia in 1991 as a guest of the University of Queensland in 1991.
It was his first visit to the country.
He later lived in the United States and the United Kingdom before settling in Adelaide, South Australia, in 2002.
Coetzee is an honorary research fellow at the University of Adelaide.
A full-page advertising promotion in newspapers quotes from his acceptance speech upon receiving his citizenship certificate.
He said at the ceremony: "I was attracted by the free and generous spirit of the people, by the beauty of the land itself, and - when I first saw Adelaide - by the grace of the city that I now have the honour to call my home."
Coetzee added: "One of the more intangible of those duties and responsibilities is no matter what one's birth and background, to accept the historical past of the new country as one's own."
- SAPA