![]() ![]() ![]() The short answer is – Boyhood and Youth are largely true to the record Summertime strays far more into the fictional domain.Ĭoetzee’s choice to cooperate with biographer John Kannemeyer is an interesting one. The question of how accurate the autobiographical trilogy is will perhaps provide one titillating motivation for readers to pick up this new biography. “All writing is autobiography,” he has said more than once. Exactly to what degree 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. On the other hand, he has published three volumes of “fictionalised memoirs” already: Boyhood (1997), Youth (2002) and Summertime (2009). On the one hand he is known to guard his privacy intensely. John Maxwell Coetzee, the great South African man of letters, is a paradoxical figure. REBECCA DAVIS found the biography revealing. Coetzee’s reputation for reclusiveness means the work is certain to attract a great deal of interest. 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 last year, has just been published. ![]()
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