MADRID’S Prado Museum will be welcoming Nobel laureate JM Coetzee for a special three-week stay as he becomes the first author to get involved in a new initiative called ‘Writing the Prado’.
83-year-old Coetzee won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and is a two-time Booker prize winner.
The new Prado programme is a joint venture with the Loewe Foundation which will invite internationally renowned writers to engage literarily with the museum’s collections.
As inaugural Fellow, the South African writer will spend three weeks living in Madrid (from late June to mid-July), making the Prado his centre of activity and also of contemplation.
He will write a story related to his time at the Prado, the first of a story collection that the Museum will dedicate to exploring the potential for creative expression at the crossroads of fiction and the visual arts.
During his stay, the Nobel Laureate will also take part in a public interview at the Prado with his Spanish translator, the philosopher and writer Mariana Dimopulos.
JM Coetzee, born in South Africa in 1940, has published nineteen works of fiction, as well as literary criticism and translations.
He is regarded as one of the most acclaimed and decorated English language authors.
Much of his work questions apartheid which he was brought up under in South Africa and challenges all forms of racism.
He now lives in Adelaide, South Australia, where he is a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide.
He’s also had visiting appointments over a long academic career, at US universities such as Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford.
READ MORE: