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Early life and education

Coetzee was born in Cape Town, Cape Province, Union of South Africa, on 9 February 1940 to Afrikaner parents. His father, Zacharias Coetzee (1912–1988), was an occasional attorney and government employee, and his mother, Vera Coetzee (née Wehmeyer; 1904–1986), a schoolteacher. His father was often absent, and enlisted in the army and fought in World War II to avoid being prosecuted on a criminal charge. Vera and her children therefore relied on financial and other support from relatives. The family mainly spoke English at home, but Coetzee spoke Afrikaans with other relatives.

He is descended from 17th-century Dutch immigrants to South Africa, on his father's side, and from Dutch, German, and Polish immigrants through his mother. His mother's grandfather was a Pole, referred to by the Germanised form, Balthazar du Biel, but actually born Balcer Dubiel in 1844 in the village of Czarnylas (Schwarzwald), in a part of Poland annexed by Prussia. His ancestry caused a lifelong preoccupation with Polish literature and culture, culminating in his 2022 novel The Pole.

Coetzee spent most of his early life in Cape Town and in Worcester, a town in the Cape Province (modern-day Western Cape), as recounted in his fictionalised memoir, Boyhood (1997). His family moved to Worcester when he was eight, after his father lost his government job. Coetzee attended St. Joseph's College, a Catholic school in the Cape Town suburb Rondebosch. He studied mathematics and English at the University of Cape Town (UCT), receiving a Bachelor of Arts with honours in English in 1960 and a Bachelor of Arts with honours in mathematics in 1961.

Coetzee moved to the United Kingdom in 1962 and worked as a computer programmer for IBM in London and ICT (International Computers and Tabulators) in Bracknell, staying until 1965. His experiences in England are recounted in Youth (2002), his second volume of fictionalised memoirs.

In 1963, the University of Cape Town awarded Coetzee a Master of Arts degree for his thesis The Works of Ford Madox Ford with Particular Reference to the Novels (1963).