Waiting for the Barbarians

John Maxwell Coetzee (born 9 February 1940 in Cape Town, South Africa) is a South African-Australian novelist, essayist, and translator, one of the most critically acclaimed authors in the English language. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003 and the Booker Prize twice—for Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999)—among numerous other awards. He moved to Australia in 2002, becoming a citizen in 2006, and continues to write, with his latest work being The Pole and Other Stories (2023).