Arts

16 Mar 09

The Nobel Prize-winning author JM Coetzee will be giving a rare public reading of his latest book at the University of Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre on 11 June 2009.

The South African-born writer, who has enjoyed significant popularity since the publication of his 1999 novel Disgrace, guards his time fiercely.  This means his visit to Oxford is a valuable opportunity for students and the public to hear him read from his latest, and 20th book, Summertime. This is the third installment of his reflections of a provincial upbringing and was preceded by Boyhood and Youth.

The day after the Sheldonian reading, Professor Coetzee will be giving a small, limited-seating reading at Oxford’s Wolfson College as part of a panel alongside three other invited authors, Zoe Wicomb, Helen Simpson, and Oxford’s Elleke Boehmer.

As well as winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003, Professor Coetzee has won numerous other awards worldwide. He is the first writer to have been awarded the Booker Prize for Literature twice, for Life and Times of Michael K and Disgrace. He is also one of the few living writers to be taught on named author courses on both the English Faculty’s undergraduate and masters’ syllabuses – and has been for over ten years.

JM Coetzee, who is now an Australian citizen, said: 'The last time I visited Oxford, in the summer of 2002, it was in order to receive an honorary degree from the University in a ceremony which, at least for the participant, was full of interest for its ritual complexity. The performance I will be giving in June will be a much simpler affair: a reading from the third and last installment, recently completed, of the series Scenes from Provincial Life.'

The Faculty of English believe this is a unique and important opportunity for students, which will help to encourage research initiatives in twentieth and twenty-first century world writing in English, in which a number of the Faculty’s members, including Professors Hermione Lee and Elleke Boehmer, and Drs Peter McDonald and Ankhi Mukherjee, have strong and diverse research interests.

Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, who has invited Mr Coetzee and organised the Sheldonian event, said: 'Haunting, scrupulous and elusive, JM Coetzee's singular narratives analyse some of the most difficult questions of our time - concerning justice, violence, salvation, the complicated dimensions of sympathy - and speak directly to the buried secrets of the human heart. He is simply put one of the most acclaimed, valued and significant of writers living today.'

Tickets cost £4 for everyone except students of the University of Oxford. Tickets are available from the Customer Service Department of Blackwell Bookshop on Broad Street, or by telephoning 01865 333623.