Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

J.M. Coetzee: A Life in Writing by J.C. Kannemeyer, translated by Michiel Heyns

by
February 2013, no. 348

J.M. Coetzee: A Life in Writing by J.C. Kannemeyer, translated by Michiel Heyns

Scribe, $59.95 hb, 710 pp, 9781922070081

J.M. Coetzee: A Life in Writing by J.C. Kannemeyer, translated by Michiel Heyns

by
February 2013, no. 348

When I heard that someone was writing Coetzee’s biography, I thought he must be either brave or foolish. After all, Coetzee’s own approach to autobiography is slippery, to say the least. J.C. Kannemeyer was (he died suddenly on Christmas Day 2011) a South African professor of Afrikaans and Dutch, a veteran biographer, and a literary historian. Coetzee co-operated fully, granting extensive interviews, making documents available, answering queries by email, and offering no interference. ‘He said he wanted the facts in the book to be correct. He did not wish to see the manuscript before publication.’ In other words, he behaved impeccably. Any suspicion that Coetzee’s Summertime (2009), in which a biographer researches the late J.M. Coetzee’s life, is based on his experience of being Kannemeyer’s subject is removed by the epilogue. Summertime was conceived and largely written before the biography was contemplated.

Gillian Dooley reviews 'J.M. Coetzee: A Life in Writing' by J.C. Kannemeyer, translated by Michiel Heyns

J.M. Coetzee: A Life in Writing

by J.C. Kannemeyer, translated by Michiel Heyns

Scribe, $59.95 hb, 710 pp, 9781922070081

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.