John Maxwell Coetzee is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator, and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is one of the most critically acclaimed and decorated authors in the English language. He has won the Booker Prize twice, the CNA Literary Award thrice, the Jerusalem Prize, the Prix Femina étranger, and The Irish Times International Fiction Prize, among other awards and honorary doctorates.

Coetzee moved to Australia in 2002 and became an Australian citizen in 2006. He resides in Adelaide, South Australia, and is the patron of the J. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide. His most recently published book is The Pole and Other Stories (2023).