John M Coetzee
Something has gone badly wrong in relations between human beings and other animals, and it is not just animal welfare and animal rights organisations that say so. Large swathes of the public are troubled too.
John M Coetzee is a novelist and literary critic. He is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, a two-time winner of the Booker Prize and winner of the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the 2010 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
Coetzee has two honours degrees from the University of Cape Town and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Texas, which he received while in there on the Fulbright Program in 1965. He has taught English literature at the State University of New York, Buffalo and the University of Cape Town where he was the Distinguished Professor of Literature between 1999 and 2001. He also holds ten honorary doctorates.
Coetzee is the author of numerous novels, fictional autobiographies and non-fiction publications. In 2005 he was awarded the Order of Mapungubwe (gold class) by the South African government for his “exceptional contribution in the field of literature and for putting South Africa on the world stage.”
Coetzee is a vocal advocate for the animal protection movement and many of his books including Disgrace, The Lives of Animals, and Elizabeth Costello have engaged with issues of animal welfare and cruelty. As a Voiceless Patron, Coetzee played an active role as a judge for both the Voiceless Writing Prize, and the Voiceless Media Prize.
John’s latest work, The Schooldays of Jesus, was released in 2016.