SOURCE: Lenta, Margaret. “An Overview of the Life and Career of J. M. Coetzee.” In Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 161, edited by Tom Burns and Jeffrey W. Hunter. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2002.

In the following essay, Lenta discusses Coetzee's life, career, awards and recognition, and overall body of work, while also examining the era in which Coetzee wrote and the critical reception of his works.

About J. M. Coetzee

Coetzee was born in Cape Town in 1940 and spent part of his childhood, from 1948 until 1951, in Worcester, a small town in the Cape Province of South Africa. His parents were Zacharias Coetzee, the lawyer son of a farmer, and Vera Wehmeyer Coetzee, who had been a schoolteacher but who, in conformity with the prejudices of the day, did not work during Coetzee's childhood, devoting herself to her two sons, of whom J. M. Coetzee was the elder. Both...