Another South African Steals The Nobel Prize in Literature .

South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee yesterday scooped The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2003.

(PRWEB) October 2 2003--Another South African Steals The Nobel Prize in Literature.

BY NOVELL ZWANGENDABA.

South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee yesterday scooped The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2003.Coetzee whose earliest novel, Dusklands,

was the first example of the capacity for empathy that has enabled him time and again to creep beneath the skin of the alien and the abhorrent,has been described as one who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider".

Formerly an American administrator during the Vietnam war ,Coetze masters great skills of devising an unbeatable system of psychological

warfare, while at the same time his private life disintegrates around him. His reflections are juxtaposed with a report on an expedition to

explore the African grasslands in two forms of misanthropy that reflect each other, one of them intellectual and megalomaniac, the other vital

and barbaric.

The 63-year-old writer,whose next novel is "In The Heart Of the Country" harmonises strangely with the surrounding African landscape.As a long

favored contender,he was tapped for the prestigious award for his ability to write stories that captivate readers.

Coetzee made his debut as a writer of fiction in 1974. His international breakthrough came in 1980 with the novel Waiting for the Barbarians. He was awarded the Booker Prize in the United Kingdom for Life and Times of Michael K in 1983.

After updating" Robinson Crusoe in the novel Foe in 1986, Coetzee returned to South Africa with Age of Iron in 1990.In 1999 Coetzee became

the first author to be twice awarded the Booker Prize, now for his novel Disgrace, in which the plot, as in In the Heart of the Country,1977, mainly takes place on a remote farm in South Africa.

A fundamental theme in Coetzees novels involves the values and conduct resulting from South Africas apartheid system, which, in his view,

could arise anywhere.Coetzee has also published translations and acted as a literary critic for the New York Review of Books for instance.

Coetzees literary criticism has been published in essay form in journals such as Comparative Literature, the Journal of Literary Semantics and the Journal of Modern Literature and collections have been issued as White Writing, 1998, Doubling the Point, 1992, Giving Offense : Essays on Censorship, 1996, and Stranger Shores : Essays 1986 --1999 in 2001.

Coetzees latest work Elizabeth Costello : Eight Lessons, 2003, is a mixture of essay and fiction, and some sections have already been included in other published works such as What is Realism? and The Lives of Animals.

The organisers of the Noble Prize, the Swedish Academy said, "There is a great wealth of variety in Coetzees works. No two books ever follow

the same recipe." In its citation, the academy said Coetzee's novels are characterised by their well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and

analytical brilliance. Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the academy said the decision was an easy one. "We were very much convinced of the lasting value of his contribution to literature. I'm not speaking of the number of books, but the variety, and the very high average quality,'' he said. "I think he is a writer ... that will continue to be discussed and analyzed and we think he should belong to our literary heritage.''

Coetzee who is renowned for shunning publicity, and never bothered to collect the two Booker Prizes he won in 1983 ,takes home a whooping

prize check of more than $1.3 million.This is the second time the award went to a South African,in 1991 fellow South African author Nadine Gordimer scooped the award.

###