J. M. Coetzee (born 1940) was a white South African novelist whose writings reflected strong anti-imperialist sentiments.

John M. Coetzee, the son of a sheep farmer, was born in Cape Town in 1940 and was educated in both South Africa and the United States. He earned his B.A. at the University of Cape Town, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas. After the Sharpeville crisis in South Africa in 1960 he spent ten years outside the country as a student, a lecturer, and an employee in a multi-national corporation. Returning to teach English at the University of Cape Town in 1971, he had a highly cosmopolitan outlook that tended to set him apart from most white South African writers. Indeed, he felt that his writing fit into no recognizably South African literary tradition and was more influenced by the vogue of postmodernist writing in Europe and America of the...