Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee is less reclusive than his reputation would suggest, but don’t expect him to dazzle in question-and-answer sessions:

the Princeton lectures, or lessons as he called them, were called “The Lives of Animals” and he made them his last.

“They liberated me, I hope forever, from the unhappy role of lecturer,” said Coetzee, who supervises the thesis of a PhD student at Adelaide University by email and failed to turn up twice to collect the Booker Prize.

“Since that day I have never given a lecture, unless what I am saying now turns into a lecture, which I am going to forestall by wringing its neck pretty promptly.”