IMPACTS OF APARTHEID ON J.M. COETZEE’S MAJOR WORKS: WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, THE LIFE & TIMES OF MICHAEL K, AND BOYHOOD: SCENES FROM PROVINCIAL LIFE

South African author and academic, John Maxwell Coetzee is one of the most renowned writers who has won the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is well-known for his depiction of his native country both during and after apartheid. As a writer who is strongly influenced by his background of being born and brought up in South Africa during apartheid, Coetzee adopts antiimperialist feelings and accordingly the traces of his personal beliefs and experiences can obviously be seen in his books. His sense of alienation in a multi-cultural society becomes the focus of many of his works. Dislocating and de-policitised features in Coetzee’s writing add universalism into his novels and rescue him from the traditions of politically committed fiction. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that Coetzee both serves committed anti-apartheid writing and addresses the general, universal issues of humanity such as suffering, tyranny, racism or oppression through an interpretative method. It also aims at indicating that binary oppositions like civilized versus barbarians, black versus white or isolation, alienation and identity crisis are the major issues explored in J.M.Coetzee’s major works. Therefore it is inferred from Coetzee’s writing style that his works denote an allegorical attack on the apartheid system in which suffering, torture and violent deaths are inevitable as a result of the discrepancies between clashing races.