J M Coetzee was born in South Africa in 1940. He won the 1983 Booker Prize with Life & Times of Michael K and then again with Disgrace in 1999. His novels include Waiting for the Barbarians (awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1980) and The Master of Petersburg (awarded the Irish Times International Fiction Prize in 1995). In 2003 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. J M Coetzee lives in Australia.