In 1987, JM Coetzee travelled to Jerusalem to accept a prize celebrating individual freedom. Thirty-nine years later, he will not be returning.

The 86-year-old Nobel laureate has declined an invitation to the Jerusalem International Writers Festival, which runs 25 to 28 May, in a letter that amounts to one of the most direct literary condemnations of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

“For the past two years the state of Israel has been conducting a genocidal campaign in Gaza that has been vastly disproportionate to the murderous provocation of 7 October 2023,” Coetzee wrote to festival artistic director Julia Fermentto-Tzaisler, in correspondence obtained by the Guardian.

What gives the letter its force is the rupture it marks. Coetzee revealed he had long considered himself a supporter of Israel. “I kept telling myself that surely the day was coming when the Israeli people would have a change of heart and deliver some form of justice to the Palestinian people whose land they had taken over,” he wrote. “The campaign of annihilation in Gaza has changed all that.”

He added: “It will take many years for Israel to clear its name, assuming that it wishes to do so, and to re-establish itself in the international community.”

Fermentto-Tzaisler told the Guardian she respected his decision. “Literature is my instrument, and through it I will fight for my liberal and democratic values and for freedom of expression,” she said, describing boycotts as “an ineffective tool for changing reality.”

Coetzee’s refusal joins a growing pattern of cultural figures reconsidering ties to Israel — from Sally Rooney’s refusal to sell Hebrew translation rights to an Israeli publisher in 2021, to filmmakers including Tilda Swinton, Olivia Colman and Ken Loach signing a pledge not to work with Israeli film institutions.

Born in apartheid South Africa, Coetzee rarely gives interviews or makes public appearances. A letter like this, from a writer of his stature and reticence, is not issued lightly.

Sources