John Maxwell Coetzee, He was born in Cape Town in 1940, and grew up in South Africa and the United States. He is a literature teacher, translator, linguist and literary critic. In 1961 he graduated, with honors, in Mathematics and English Philology from the University of Cape Town. In 1962, he worked in the United Kingdom as a computer programmer. He later lived in the United States,

where he received a PhD in Linguistics at the University of Texas, in Austin. He was professor of English Literature at Buffalo, State University of New York and, when he returned to South Africa, at the University of Cape Town. He published several novels, among them In the middle of nowhere (1977) and Waiting for the barbarians (1980), both winners of the CNA South African literary prize; Life and time of Michael K (1983), Booker Prize and Prix Étranger Femina; Foe (1986); The Iron Age (1990); The teacher of Petersburg (1994); Children (1998); Misfortune (1999), again Booker Prize; Youth (2002); Elizabeth Costello (2003); Slow Man (2005); Diary of a bad year (2007); Summer (2009); and The childhood of Jesus (2013). He has also published several essay books, including: Against censorship (1996); The lives of animals (1999); Strange Costs (2002) and Internal Mechanisms (2007). In 2003 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is one of the most important English language writers. He currently resides in Australia.