John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, and translator. The recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, Coetzee is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize (twice), the Central News Agency Literary Award (thrice), the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and holds a number of other awards and honorary doctorates. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2003, announced October 2, 2003. J. M. Coetzee, “who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider”. J. M. Coetzee: born 1940, Cape Town, South Africa. Wiki link Data: the Nobel Foundation (CC0).