Johannesburg,Oct 03: South African writer JM Coetzee has drawn heavily on his country's experience of apartheid and the racial divide to craft the novels which won him the Nobel Prize for Literature. John Maxwell Coetzee, 63, was born in 1940 in Cape Town in South Africa. His background is both German and English and his parents sent him to an English school. A fundamental theme criss-crossing all his novels is the values and workings of South Africas apartheid system. But the Nobel Committee today praised him for the "great wealth of variety" in his works. "No two books ever follow the same recipe," the citation read. "Extensive reading reveals a recurring pattern, the downward spiralling journeys he considers necessary for the salvation of his characters. His protagonists are overwhelmed by the urge to sink but paradoxically derive strength from being stripped of all external dignity."
Bureau Report