The Historical Writing In J.M.coetzee’s Waiting For The Barbarians And Disgrace

John Maxwell Coetzee was born in1940in Cape Town, South Africa. His parents are theimmigrants from Dutch. He grew up in the period during which apartheid policy wasgradually taking shape and prevailing in South Africa. J. M. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize inLiterature and the highest literary honor CNA Award (winning three times) in South Africa.He also won the Irish Times International Prize, the French Femina, the Jerusalem Prize, andthe British Booker Prize and so on. One of the most famous prizes is the Booker McConnellPrize for Fiction. It is the highest honor of the contemporary English novel. As we know, theNobel Prize in Literature is not for one work, but for one writer. The Booker Prize is just forone work. Therefore, one writer has the opportunity to win the Booker Prize several times. J.M. Coetzee has won the Booker Prize two times: one is for the1983’s Life and Times ofMichael K, and the other is for Disgrace in1999. The same writer wins the prize twice, whichis rare in the history of the Booker Prize. It also reflects from another perspective that J. M.Coetzee’s works are really excellent.This thesis includes five parts. First of all, the introduction is about the personalexperience of John Maxwell Coetzee and his works, and the research which the scholars didboth in China and abroad. The second part is about the historical writing of the apartheid. Itintroduces the social environment and people’s living conditions during the apartheid regimein South Africa. It also describes the writing about racial discrimination and sexualdiscrimination against the non-whites. The third part describes the survival conditions of thewhite and the revenge against the white. The fourth part analyzes J.M.Coetzee’s point of viewabout apartheid from the main characters’ awakening. The fifth part is the conclusion. In J. M.Coetzee’s works, there are no specific locations, names, and time. It implies Coetzee’s point ofview about history. He believes that the apartheid regime not only happened in the formerSouth Africa, but also will occur at any time and in any place. We should learn from historicalexperience, avoiding this kind of brutal system. Not only the white and the black, anyone inthe world should understand and integrate with each other and eliminate the gap.