South-African novelist, literary critic, and translator J.M. Coetzee is the recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature and a two-time winner of the Booker Prize. His writing often uses his country's apartheid system and its post-apartheid transition as a mirror for the bleakness of the human condition. Coetzee’s work also participates in passionate debates about race and political power, and engages in conversation with the great European novelists. For example, in Foe, Coetzee responds to Robinson Crusoe; in The Master of Petersburg, Dostoevsky is the protagonist. Mr. Coetzee's best-known novels are Waiting for the Barbarians; Life and Times of Michael K; The Master of Petersburg; and Disgrace. He has also published books of essays and two memoirs, Boyhood and Youth. Coetzee has held visiting professorships at numerous institutions including Harvard, the University of Texas at Austin, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Adelaide.