David Attwell is Head of the English Department at the University of York. He has written several works about and with J. M. Coetzee, including J. M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and Doubling the Point (1992).

J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing is the first book to feature detailed information from the various stages of J. M. Coetzee’s manuscripts, sourced from more than 155 boxes of literary archive at the Harry Random Centre in the University of Texas.