Practical
Monday, 13 October, 2025
- 19:00 until 20:30
De Munt / La Monnaie
Munt
1000 Brussels
Munt
1000 Brussels
Standard: €10 - € 25. Students: €5 - €12,5.
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel, La Monnaie/De Munt, Passa Porta and Cossee Publishers cordially invite you to an evening with Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee.
More than twenty years after receiving the world’s most prestigious literary accolade, J.M. Coetzee continues to write books that are both timeless and relevant. Known for rarely making public appearances, it is a true honour to welcome him to Brussels and to award him with an honorary doctorate.
Doctor Honoris Causa
With this recognition, VUB not only honors one of the most celebrated authors of our time, but also a writer who has consistently used literature in an exceptional way to question the world.
Beyond his own writing, Coetzee has consistently fostered dialogue and collaboration. His work as translator, editor, and correspondent reflects a generosity towards fellow writers. This is evident in his correspondence with Paul Auster (Here and Now), his dialogues with Mariana Dimópulos (Speaking in Tongues / Spreken in tongen, 2025), and his adaptation of Olive Schreiner’s novel From Man to Man (Van man tot man, 2025), now appearing for the first time in Dutch.
By awarding Coetzee an honorary doctorate—the first conferred by a Dutch-speaking university—VUB acknowledges a writer who deliberately draws attention to voices and literatures from minoritized voices and literatures, and to the value of linguistic diversity and translation. Throughout his career Coetzee has foregrounded problematic power relations that are played out in decisions concerning language, publishers, and platforms. His thematically and stylistically innovative oeuvre resonates strongly with the humanistic and multilingual mission of VUB.
Programme
To mark J.M. Coetzee’s visit to Brussels and The Hague, his Dutch publisher Cossee is releasing Wereld en wandel van Elizabeth Costello, for which the author selected old Costello stories and added new ones. This prominent character in Coetzee’s oeuvre is also the subject of a new opera, with a libretto by the author himself.
During this encounter, Coetzee will deliver an insightful lecture on a subject close to his heart. The evening will be accompanied by live music from the operas based on his work, most notably by Belgian composer Nicholas Lens.
Publisher Cossee and Passa Porta will provide an on-site book sale featuring the works of J.M. Coetzee.
About J.M. Coetzee
A life between languages, continents and systems of knowledge
John Maxwell Coetzee (b. Cape Town, 1940) is a novelist, translator, essayist, and literary scholar. He studied English literature, mathematics, and linguistics, and earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968, with a dissertation on Samuel Beckett. He taught at universities in the United States and South Africa, before settling in Australia in 2002, where he became an honorary research fellow at the University of Adelaide.
A body of work without borders
Coetzee authored fifteen novels as well as autobiographical narratives, essays, and critical studies. His novels Life and Times of Michael K (1983) and Disgrace (1999) each won the Booker Prize—an unprecedented achievement in the literary world. In 2003, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, confirming his place as one of the most significant literary voices of our time. His work engages with themes such as apartheid, censorship, the position of the outsider, the relationship between human and non-human, and the ethical responsibility of literature.
The world needs you
This initiative is part of PACT - the Pauwels Academy of Critical Thinking of Vrije Universiteit Brussel. With PACT, VUB offers a programme for everyone who believes that scientific knowledge sharing, critical thinking and dialogue are an important first step to create impact in the world.
As an Urban Engaged University, VUB aims to be a driver of change in the world. With our academic edcuational programmes and innovative research, we contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and to making a difference locally and globally.
