Age of Iron Study Guide

Coetzee was born in Cape Town to Afrikaner parents. His father was a soldier during his childhood and was rarely present. Coetzee attended Catholic school before moving on to the University of Cape Town where he studied mathematics and English. Coetzee graduated college with a dual degree and then worked for IBM as a programmer in the early 1960s. He also received a Master of Arts degree in 1963, also from the University of Cape Town. Then, in 1965, Coetzee traveled to the United States and studied at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received his PhD in English literature. Coetzee began writing fiction in 1968 while working on his PhD and eventually published his first novel, Dusklands, in 1974. Coetzee followed up his debut with In the Heart of the Country in 1977, before publishing his first major novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, in 1980. Waiting for the Barbarians brought Coetzee international acclaim, and he followed it up with two of his most famous novels, Life & Times of Michael K and Foe. In the late 1990s, Coetzee published his first autobiographical novel, Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, as well as his most critically acclaimed novel, Disgrace. He immigrated to Australia in 2002, and he still lives there today. Today, Coetzee is South Africa’s best-known writer, as well as one of the most decorated novelists in the world. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and has continued to produce influential and critically acclaimed work ever since.

Age of Iron takes place during Apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid was a system of racial segregation and discrimination that the South African government enforced from 1948 until the mid 1990s. Under Apartheid, the South African population was classified into racial groups, with white South Africans holding significant political power and privileges, while non-white South Africans, especially Black people, were subjected to severe racial discrimination, economic inequality, and political disenfranchisement. Notably, the 1980s witnessed a significant increase in resistance against apartheid. The African National Congress, led by figures like Nelson Mandela, played a crucial role in organizing protests and anti-Apartheid activities both within South Africa and on the international stage. Resistance was met with attempts at violent suppression from the South African government, and the violence grew more intense the longer Apartheid dragged on. Age of Iron takes place during an unspecified time period toward the end of Apartheid, when the violence was at its peak.

Nearly all of J. M. Coetzee’s novels deal with the issue of Apartheid in South Africa. Perhaps the most famous of his works to do so is Disgrace, the story of a white South African professor navigating post-Apartheid South Africa after ruining his reputation and losing his job. Coetzee won the Booker Prize for Disgrace and for Life & Times of Michael K, a novel that depicts an imagined civil war during Apartheid. Other contemporary South African writers have also tackled the issue of Apartheid, including Damon Galgut and Nadine Gordimer. Galgut’s most notable novel—and also his most recent—is The Promise, which tells a decades-long story of one family’s experience in Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa. Meanwhile, Gordimer is primarily known for her anti-Apartheid novels Burger’s Daughter and July’s People, which the South African government banned because of their politics. All of these works are also part of a larger body of world literature focused on atrocity. Other books in this tradition include works of Holocaust literature, such as Elie Wiesel’s Night and Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark (published as Schindler’s List in the United States).