J.M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1940. He initially worked for a technology company in the sixties and spent a great deal of time trying to prove that logic was a man made invention. Becoming bored with writing computer code, he commenced graduate work in the emerging field of "stylo statistics". His PhD thesis analysed verbal patterns in Beckett's prose. This thesis was submitted in 1969, in January 1970 he began writing Dusklands'.
Before receiving the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, Coetzee had been awarded numerous literature prizes, including the Booker Prize, the first author to win it twice.
He relocated to Adelaide in 2002 and became an Australian citizen in 2006.