Andre Brink on Life & Writing in South Africa
b'
This from contemporary writers: One of South Africa\\u2019s most distinguished writers, Andr\\xe9 Brink was born in 1935. Poet, novelist, essayist and teacher, he began work as a University lecturer in Afrikaans and Dutch Literature in the 1960s.\\xa0He began writing in Afrikaans, but when censored by the South African government, began to also write in English and became published overseas. He remains a key figure in the modernisation of the Afrikaans language novel.
His novel, A Dry White Season (1979),\\xa0was made into a film starring Marlon Brando while An Instant in the Wind (1976), the story of a relationship between a white woman and a black man,\\xa0and Rumours of Rain (1978) were both\\xa0shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction.\\xa0 Devil\\u2019s Valley (1998)\\xa0explores the life of a community locked away from the rest of the world, and The Other Side of Silence (2002), set in colonial Africa in the early twentieth century, won a Commonwealth Writers regional award for Best Book\\xa0in 2003.\\xa0He has also written a collection of essays on literature and politics, Reinventing a Continent (1996),\\xa0prefaced by Nelson Mandela.\\xa0
He is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Cape Town. His latest novels are\\xa0Praying Mantis (2005) and The Blue Door (2007). His memoir, A Fork in the Road\\xa0was published in 2009
I met Andre Brink at his home in Cape Town. (His lovely young wife Karina greeted me at the door and led me into his book-lined study).\\xa0
Once seated we talked mostly about his life, about his father, about love and duty, justice, Apartheid, inter-racial sex, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer; his love affair with poet Ingrid Jonker, her suicide, her poem \\u2018Plant me a Tree,\\u2019 English as his second language, Picasso, recommended wines and staying in South Africa despite his nephew having been shot dead by intruders at his home just north of Johannesburg.
'