At Harvard, Coetzee receives Mahindra Award
Accepting the inaugural Mahindra Award for Global Distinction in the Humanities, Nobel Prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee treated the audience filling Sanders Theatre on Wednesday to thoughts about his earliest reading and the concept of a mother tongue. The ceremony, which included a panel discussion among 11 humanities scholars, opened with a performance of Bach by pianist Stephen Prutsman. Homi K. Bhabha, director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, then introduced the award, named after Anand G. Mahindra ’77 and his wife, Anuradha Mahindra, which “celebrates the work and vision of an internationally renowned public figure whose career has contributed significantly to the flourishing of the arts and humanities.” Calling Coetzee a “foundational writer of the century,” Bhabha said, “What I have learned from Coetzee’s works … is that great classics glow with the slow fires of survival, their flint igniting again and again and again, rather than burning out in a showy blaze of genius.” The...