Kannemeyer coetzee biography sample
•
Review: JM Coetzee: A Life in Writing
The first authorised biography of South African writer JM Coetzee, by the late Afrikaans literary critic JC Kannemeyer, who died shortly after completing the book gods year, has just been published. Coetzee’s reputation for reclusiveness means the work is certain to attract a great deal of interest. REBECCA DAVIS funnen the biography revealing.
John Maxwell Coetzee, the great South African man of letters, is a paradoxical figure. On the one grabb he fryst vatten known to guard his privacy intensely. On the other grabb, he has published three volumes of “fictionalised memoirs” already: Boyhood (1997), Youth (2002) and Summertime (2009). Exactly to what grad these three works adhered to the historical facts of his life has always been unclear: Coetzee consistently refuses to elaborate on interpretations of his work once published. “All writing fryst vatten autobiography,” he has said more than once. The question of how accurate
•
JM Coetzee: A Life in Writing, By JC Kannemeyer, Trans. Michiel Heyns
JM Coetzee: A Life in Writing
Author:JC Kannemayer
ISBN-13:00
Publisher:Scribe
Guideline Price:Sterling30
JM Coetzee is a difficult subject for a biography. As a giant of world literature – a Nobel laureate and twice Booker winner – he has the credentials that might make him a biographer’s gift. However, Coetzee is a writer renowned for guarding his privacy jealously and for his distaste for interviews (and dinterviewers).
The problem of the inscrutable subject is compounded in Coetzee’s later books, where he has fictionalised his own life repeatedly, deliberately blurring the line between fact and fiction, making the task of any biographer perilous.
JC Kannemeyer, who died suddenly after completing the manuscript for this substantial book, has negotiated these difficulties surprisingly well, and has left behind a scrupulous and impressive first biography of his subject.
Another surprise i
•
J M Coetzee: a life in writing
J.M. Coetzee: a life in writing is the first biography of Nobel prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee. A global publishing event of the rarest kind, the book has been written with the full co-operation of Coetzee, who granted the author interviews, and put him in touch with family, friends, and colleagues who could talk about events in Coetzee's life.
For the first time, Coetzee allowed complete access to his private papers and documents, including the manuscripts of his sixteen novels. J.C. Kannemeyer has also made a study of the enormous body of literature on Coetzee, and through archival research has unearthed further information not previously available.
The books deals in depth with Coetzee's origins, early years, and first writings; his British interlude from 1962Ð65; his time in America from 1965Ð71; his 30 years back in South Africa, when he achieved international recognition and won the Booker prize; and his Australian years since 2002, dur