Marlene van Niekerk
Marlene van Niekerk (born November 10, 1954 on the Tygerhoek farm near Caledon , Western Cape , South Africa ) is a South African writer and professor at Stellenbosch University .
Van Niekerk studied languages and philosophy at Stellenbosch University. As a student, she wrote several plays. She obtained her master’s degree in 1978 with a thesis on Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra . She then went to Germany to train as a director at theaters in Stuttgart and Mainz . In 1980 she moved to Holland, where she did her PhD in philosophy in 1985 with a thesis on Claude Lévi-Strauss and Paul Ricœur .
She writes her works in Afrikaans , beginning with the volumes of poetry Sprokkelster (1977) and Groenstaar (1983) . Her first novel Triomf (Afrikaans for Triumph) appeared in 1994 shortly after the first general election in South Africa and is considered to be one of the first literary texts of the new South Africa after the end of apartheid . The novel about a poor white family from a slum in Johannesburg was made into a film by Zimbabwean director Michael Raeburn and was named best South African film at the 2008 Durban Film Festival.
Van Niekerk is Professor of Creative Writing in Afrikaans at the Faculty of Afrikaans and Dutch at Stellenbosch University.
Works
Poems
- Sprokkelster , 1977
- Groenstaar , 1983
Short stories
- The vrou wat hair verkyker vergeet het
Novels
- Triomf , 1994
- Agaat . Tafelberg Publishers, 2004. ISBN 978-0-624-04206-8 .
- Memorandum: 'n Verhaal met prente . With illustrations by Adriaan van Zyl. Human & Rousseau, 2006. ISBN 978-0-7981-4729-3 .
Awards
- 1978: Eugène Marais Prize for Sprokkelster
- 1978: Ingrid Jonker Prize for Sprokkelster
- 1995: M-Net Prize for Triomf
- 1995: CNA Literary Award for Triomf
- 1995: Noma Prize for African Literature for Triomf
- 2004: LitNet Dopper Joris-Oskar for Agaat
- 2005: UJ Prize for Agaat
- 2007: Hertzogprys for prose for Agaat
- 2007: CL Engelbrecht Prize for literature for Agaat
- 2007: Alan Paton Award for Agaat
- 2014: Hertzogprys for poetry for Kaar
Individual evidence
- ↑ List of the winners of the Noma Award ( Memento from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- Biography on stellenboschwriters.com
- “So it is a risk, this business of writing” , interview with Marlene van Niekerk
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Niekerk, Marlene van |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | South African writer and professor at Stellenbosch University |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 10, 1954 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | near Caledon , Western Cape , South Africa |