Author hostels, spaces where writers can focus, are a familiar feature in our cultural landscape. Yet few figures have endured the same level of challenge and distinction as Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. South Africa marks a first for the project Escribir El Prado, a program supported by gallery director Miguel Falomir in collaboration with the Loewe Foundation. The initiative invites international writers to immerse themselves not only in the museum’s displayed works but also in its collections, studios, and ongoing conservation efforts, creating a truly immersive artistic experience. The aim is to nurture a literary text that can be published, with the Grant magazine publishing the Spanish edition first and later an English edition. The project benefits from the guidance of Valerie Miles, a writer and editor based in North America, who advises the international program.
Coetzee, a Nobel Prize winner and two-time Booker Prize recipient, catalyzed this venture, signaling a bold path for the author to visit Europe in the near term. Madrid, the capital, represents a discreet retreat from media glare, a city known for its reserve and intimate cultural scene. In a letter to his friend Paul Auster, Coetzee candidly reflected on his reluctance to ask questions and his tendency toward brief, sometimes terse answers, which can be misread as anger. This self-awareness underscores the author’s complex public persona.
Love for Castile
Throughout his career, and especially in the 21st century, Coetzee has shown a preference for distancing himself from the main hubs of Anglo-Saxon cultural power, preferring the quieter rhythms of residence away from New York or London. This shift, coupled with a growing fondness for the Spanish language and for Latin American literature, informs a body of work that often engages with geopolitical South perspectives. Recent publications include Spanish editions tied to regional publishers, with some titles appearing in collaboration with the Argentine house El Hilo de Ariadna, occasionally viewed as a reconceived language of globalization rather than a direct translation.
Just before the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2003, Coetzee moved to Adelaide, Australia, to lecture at a local university and later acquired Australian citizenship, signaling a symbolic alignment with the southern hemisphere. Over time, he shifted from a naive narrator to a critical thinker addressing themes such as animal welfare, vegetarianism, and social justice.
Spain, a country he has visited repeatedly, has served as a recurring backdrop in several stories. In 2000 he wrote a short piece titled A House in Spain, with a narrative linking Bellpuig in Urgell to a home in Lleida. A Spanish publisher later denied the factual basis of the anecdote, insisting the story remained firmly within fiction, though the question of the author’s private residence often invites skepticism about truth versus imagination.
His most recent fiction, including dialect-rich strands set in Catalonia, continues to explore landscape and memory. A novel centered on a Chopin-adept pianist summoned by a beloved woman unfolds in Barcelona’s environs, while a character named Elizabeth Costello—an apparent alter ego—dwells briefly in a small town in Castilla. The weight of art in Coetzee’s South African context appears across cinema, dance, and, notably, music. A recurring image—an archaic dog rendered in a frozen depiction—serves as a meditative device on how memory reshapes perception.
The Prado residency offers six writers, divided into two cohorts for each of three years: one established, with a long career and broad renown, and one emerging, with a fresh voice. Each pair spends three weeks to two months in residence, a rhythm designed to blend literary practice with deep encounters in the museum’s program and workshops.
Letters Describing El Prado
The fusion of writing and painting has long shaped the museum’s literary resonance. The permanent collection has inspired a lineage of writers, including Eugeni D’Ors, whose Three Hours at the Prado Museum (1922) framed the institution as a guide to visiting. A contemporary Argentinean edition echoes similar aims, while Manuel Mujica Lainez’s A Novelist at the Prado Museum contributes to the tradition of prose and visual art. The dialogue with the paintings extends into poetry and drama, with works like War Night at the Prado Museum articulating the experience of moving art during the Civil War era. Buero Vallejo’s Las Meninas, probing the moment of creation, adds to the didactic and creative lineage.
Recent publications include Prado Tours, a collection of lectures from 2019 marking the institution’s bicentennial, and other creative explorations that traverse memory and perception. A contemporary graphic work, Leaving Atocha Station by Max Porter, imaginatively travels through the gallery’s rooms and invites readers to reframe the gallery as a stage for memory, while a poetic meditation titled The Garden of Earthly Delights offers a special look at El Bosco’s celebrated panel on its quincentennial. These works reflect the enduring interplay between art and writing at El Prado.