Coetzee is South African...

He took up Australian citizenship about a year ago, as reported here.

Coetzee does now have Australian citizenship, but I think it's pretty hard to make a case for him being an Australian writer, rather than South African. Are we going to now say that Peter Carey is an American writer, since he took out American citizenship a few years ago?

The book is set in Adelaide, the author is an Australian resident and citizen, and I get the hint from his interviews that he fully intends to live here permanently. Carey may be an American citizen now, but his books are firmly set in Australia (in the main), and I do get the feeling that he will return to this country to live.

Double standards? Of course. What would life be without them?

Perry, you make some interesting points. However, I doubt Carey will return to Australia to live anytime soon, since his sons live in NY. Apparently Carey's next novel is set in the U.S. at Vassar College, so that will disqualify it for the Miles Franklin and perhaps lead to a discussion of whether the author and the novel are Australian or American. Do Australians see Geraldine Brooks as an American writer, since March is set in the U.S. and she lives there too?

The issue of an author's nationality is always a vexed question, so maybe we should cede authority to the Man Booker trustees in this regard. I'd think Brooks was probably eligible for the award, and would therefore have to be considered a citizen of some British Commonwealth country (or Ireland). Given she only has major ties to Australia then we'd have to consider her an Australian writer. When she won the Pultizer a year or so back the papers were certainly touting her as Australian.

Now, I've been joking about this citizenship question for the past week as I really don't take the whole issue too seriously. The reason why I keep coming back to it is that the whole basis for me running this weblog is to raise the awareness of Australian books and Australian authors. If I fudge around the edges a little I trust people will forgive me. It has never been my intention to "claim" authors as Australian merely to increase our representation.