Coetzee, J.M.

J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Although he is of Boer descent, the family spoke English at home. His parents also sent him to an English school, even though the nationalist party, after assuming power in 1948, made new laws to stop children of Boer descent from growing up with English as their first language. After his years at upper secondary school - which Coetzee, who is a protestant, spent at a Catholic school in Cape Town - he intended to make a career as a mathematician and scientist. In 1957 he began studying literature and mathematics at the University of Cape Town. In 1962 he moved to England, where he worked as a computer programmer while writing a dissertation on the English novelist Ford Madox Ford.