(Cape Town, 1940). He studied in South Africa and the United States. He has taught literature at several prestigious universities, and is a translator, linguist, literary critic and, without doubt, one of South Africa’s most important writers, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. In 1974 he published his first novel, Dusklands. It was followed by In the Heart of the Country (1977), which won him the CNA, South African literature’s top prize; Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), which also won the CNA; Life & Times of Michael K. (1983), which won a Booker Prize, the most prestigious English language literary prize, and the Prix Femina Étranger; Foe (1986); Age of Iron (1990); The Master of Petersburg (1994); Disgrace (1999), which won him a second Booker; Boyhood (1998), Youth (2002), Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005), Diary of a Bad Year (2007) and Summertime (2009). He has also published a number of non-fictional works, including Giving Offense (1996), The Lives of Animals (1999), Stranger Shores (2002) and Inner Workings (2007). He has received the Jerusalem Prize and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize. In Spain he has won the 2003 Llibreter Prize and the Reino de Redonda Prize created by the writer Javier Marías.