Top shelf

Emeritus Professor John "JM" Coetzee's novel Disgrace has been voted as the best work of British fiction - including work from the Commonwealth nations and Ireland - written between 1989 and 2005, according to a poll by The Observer newspaper in London. Disgrace, for which Coetzee won his second Booker Prize in 1999, topped a list of novels selected by a panel of 120 literary luminaries, reported Mail & Guardian. The panel included JG Ballard, Julian Barnes, Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan and Zadie Smith. Three other Coetzee novels also made it onto the list - Waiting for the Barbarians, Age of Iron and Master of Petersburg.