Christopher Hope

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Signature (2003)

Christopher Hope (born February 26, 1944 in Johannesburg ) is a South African writer and poet whose works deal with racism and politics in South Africa.

Life

Christopher Hope was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to Dennis and Kathleen Tully. His father died in the war and his mother married Dudley Mitford Hope, who adopted the child. As a white man, Christopher Hope questioned the preferential treatment of whites in South Africa. This attitude was groundbreaking for his most famous writings. Hope attended the universities of Witwatersrand and Natal . He served in the South African Navy in 1962 . Hope married Eleanor Marilyn Margaret Klein on February 18, 1967. The couple divorced in 1994. The director of the Dubai Opera Jasper Hope and the violinist Daniel Hope are her sons.

Hope was monitored, persecuted and forced to emigrate by the apartheid regime's secret service. He went into exile with the family in Paris, and the onward journey to England was only possible after Hope's wife was able to present proof of Irish ancestry. His autobiographical piece White Boy Running is a chronicle of this period of life.

Hope's poems were first published in 1971. His first novel was published in 1981 and was banned in South Africa because of its open criticism of the apartheid government. Hope's second novel, Kruger's Alp , was seen as a stark contrast to his first work. Kruger's Alp has been described by the New York Times Book Review as "a novel in the form of a dream". Despite the distance from Hope's earlier writing, the book received a lot of critical acclaim and won the Whitbread Prize for "Novel of the Year".

Works

  • Whitewashes , 1970
  • Cape Drives , 1974
  • A Separate Development , 1977
  • In the Country of the Black Pig , 1981
  • Kruger's Alp , 1985
  • The Hottentot Room , 1986
  • Black Swan , 1987
  • White Boy Running , 1988
  • My Chocolate Redeemer , 1989
  • Moscow! Moscow! , 1990
  • Serenity House , 1992
  • The Love Songs of Nathan J. Swirsky , 1993
  • Darkest England , 1996
  • Me, the Moon and Elvis Presley , 1997
  • Signs of the Heart: Love and Death in Languedoc , 1999
  • Heaven Forbid , 2001
  • Brothers Under the Skin: Travels in Tyranny , 2003
  • My Mother's Lovers , 2007
  • Shooting Angels 2011

Web links

Commons : Christopher Hope  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Hope, Christopher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Johannesburg , South Africa