Mike Nicol

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Mike Nicol (* 1951 in Cape Town ) is a South African writer and journalist .

Life

In the 1970s Nicol studied at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg and then made a name for himself as a poet, novelist and essayist. Today he lives as a freelance writer and journalist in Cape Town.

In addition to a volume of poetry and journalistic work (including for the magazine African Wildlife and the magazine Leadership ), Nicol wrote four novels in the 1980s and 1990s that made him internationally known.

In the broadest sense, Nicol's fictional texts can be described as historical novels that deal with more or less well-known socio-political aspects of South Africa: the omnipotence of the police in the apartheid state of the 1985 "state of emergency" ( The Powers That Be , 1989), the chiliastic Revival movements of the Free Churches founded by black visionaries and their brutal annihilation in the 1920s ( This Day and Age , 1992), the rampant violence and lawlessness that the gold rush of the 1880s triggered in the Witwatersrand , the area around Johannesburg ( Horseman , 1994) and finally the filthy tricks and gun-pushing of the South African secret service that have recently come to light in the wake of the investigation of government crimes ( The Ibis Tapestry , 1998).

In 2006 he published the book Mandela. The portrait . In addition to a foreword by Kofi Annan and an introduction by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, it contains sixty interviews with celebrities about Nelson Mandela , including Bill Clinton , Bono , Tony Blair and Thabo Mbeki . Nicol himself wrote the biographical part of the book.

Nicol became known in Germany for his thriller trilogy payback (2008), killer country (2010) and black heart (2011) around the former arms smugglers Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso, who operate a security service in Cape Town.

Nicol spent a year in 1997 on a DAAD scholarship in Berlin and in 2002 received a visiting professorship as “Poet in Residence” at the University of Essen .

He has won several literary prizes, including the prestigious South African Ingrid Jonker Prize for Among the Souvenirs in 1980 and the CNA Literary Award for This Day And Age in 1993. His thriller payback was 2012 Crime of the Year in Germany (8th place) in the KrimiWelt best list .

Works

  • Among the Souvenirs , (lyric) 1978
  • African Animals , (children's book) 1982
  • The Powers That Be , (novel) 1989
    • Die Feuer der Macht , German by Thomas Piltz, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-498-04634-9
  • A Good-Looking Corpse: World of Drum - Jazz and Gangsters, Hope and Defiance in the Townships of South Africa , (non-fiction) 1991
  • This Day And Age , (novel) 1992
    • Since year and day , German by Thomas Piltz, Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-498-04636-5 .
  • This Sad Place , (lyric) 1993
  • Horseman , (novel) 1994
    • Der Reiter , German by Thomas Piltz, Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1995. ISBN 3-498-04671-3 .
  • A waiting country. A South African Witness , (non-fiction) 1994
    • Suddenly a feeling of freedom. South Africa's departure into the present , German by Kurt Neff; Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1995. ISBN 3-498-04672-1 .
  • Bra Henry , (short story) 1997
  • The Ibis Tapestry , (Thriller) 1998
  • The New Bourgeois World , (essay) 1999
    • The new bourgeois world , German by Thomas Brückner, in: Wespennest No. 117, 1999
  • Invisible Line , (non-fiction, with Ken Osterbroek ) 2000
  • Sea-mountain, Fire City: Living in Cape Town at the Turn of the 20th Century , (non-fiction) 2001
  • It's a blackboard bungle , (essay) 2001
  • A kind of civil war , (essay) 2001
  • Seven snapshots from the “civilized world” , (essay) 2002
  • What Daddy Loves , (children's book, with Sue Kassirer and Jerry Smath) 2003
  • Out to Score , (crime novel, together with Joanne Hichens) 2005
  • Mandela. The portrait , (non-fiction book) 2006
  • The Firm: A Biography of Webber Wentzel Bowens , (non-fiction) 2006
  • John Lennon - Imagine , (non-fiction) 2008
  • Dalai Lama Compassion , (non-fiction book) 2008
  • "The Vengeance Trilogy"
    • payback , (Thriller) 2008
    • killer country , (Thriller) 2010
    • black heart , (Thriller) 2011
  • Power Play , (Thriller) 2015
  • "The Cape Town Series"
    • Of Cops & Robbers , (Thriller) 2013
    • Agents of the State , (Thriller) 2016
    • Sleeper , (Thriller) 2018

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holger Ehling (Hrsg.) / Peter Ripken (Hrsg.): The literature of Black Africa. A lexicon of the authors. Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42033-8 , p. 81.
  2. ↑ https://idw-online.de/de/news47576
personal data
SURNAME Nicol, Mike
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Cape Town