The Life and Times of Michael K

The Life & Times of Michael K (1983) is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. The book itself fetched a Booker Prize in 1983, the year it was published. It tells of a hare-lipped, simple gardener, Michael K, trying to run away from the South African war during the apartheid era. His journey started from Cape Town with his ailing mother, who wanted to go back to the more rural Prince Albert, her girlhood home.

Some commentators notice a connection between the character Michael K and the protagonist Josef K in The Trial by Franz Kafka.