Which author became the first person to win the Booker Prize twice, in 1999?

J. M. Coetzee became the first person to win the Booker Prize twice in 1999. He achieved the distinction when Disgrace followed his earlier victory for Life and Times of Michael K.

Coetzee’s first win came in 1983, for a spare, allegorical novel about a man struggling to survive amid political repression in South Africa. His second winning book, Disgrace, is set in post-apartheid South Africa and centres on David Lurie, a professor whose personal failures become entangled with the country’s wider social and political tensions.

The 1999 victory was especially notable because Disgrace beat a strong shortlist that included Anita Desai, Michael Frayn, Andrew O’Hagan, Ahdaf Soueif and Colm Tóibín. Coetzee later moved to Australia and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.

Readers sometimes confuse “first to win twice” with “most wins.” Coetzee established the record in 1999; later authors, including Hilary Mantel, also won twice, but no one had done so before him.