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|title=J.M. Coetzee: A life in writing

|author=J C Kannemeyer

|publisher=Scribe

|date=June 2013

|summary=A full study of the life and work of Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee

}}

J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee is described as probably the most celebrated and decorated writer throughout the English-speaking world. The author of sixteen published novels, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Booker Prize twice. At the same time he has guarded his privacy jealously, tending to decline interviews and requests to discuss his work, and refusing to collect prestigious awards in person. On one occasion he explained his absence by saying that he could not imagine ''anything better calculated to reduce me to misery''. One acquaintance claims to have attended several dinner parties at which the author was a fellow guest and did not utter a single word.