Eric
30-Apr-2008, 14:23
Ingrid Winterbach (born 1948) [also as pseudonym: Lettie Viljoen]
This novelist and painter revels in subtlety. English readers could first access a novel of hers in autumn 2005 when "The Elusive Moth" appeared. Critic Terry Ellen writes:
The hot dry summer wraps a small Free State town in political, spiritual and sexual tension as the multi-cultural mix of residents and visitors wait for the storm to break. Award winning South African author, Ingrid Winterbach, stretches the intrigue, building the tension to its violent, eruptive end. Racial conflict and friendships burn, and lovers meet in the cemetery. Natural healer Basil collects native remedies from the veld and foresees death. Researcher Karolina follows the elusive, velvet moth in search of her father’s approval. She is tormented by memories of her family and plagued by erotic, fanciful dreams. She dances herself into states of euphoria with the Kolyn fellow and plays snooker and drinks whisky with the ‘manne’ in the local hotel. She’s witness to murder and torment. And she falls in love with a gentle man in a town on the fringe of a changing South Africa. The Elusive Moth is a compelling and seductive read.
But this is not her only novel. Two of her novels reach back to the Boer War (called the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa): Buller se plan (Buller's Plan) and Niggie (idem). But this is not Boer propaganda. The former interweaves the story of a woman in the 1990s going to her brother's funeral by car and the story of the Battle of Colenso, where the British Army was led by Sir Redvers Buller, and the various obsessions of the fighters are examined. Niggie is the story of some men taking a traumatised Boer back to base who meet up with Niggie, an attractive redhead. We Brits may be the enemy, but Winterbach is not so black-and-white in her descriptions. This latter novel has recently appeared in Dutch translation.
See:
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/cca/images/tow/TOW2006/bios/Winterbach.htm
This novelist and painter revels in subtlety. English readers could first access a novel of hers in autumn 2005 when "The Elusive Moth" appeared. Critic Terry Ellen writes:
The hot dry summer wraps a small Free State town in political, spiritual and sexual tension as the multi-cultural mix of residents and visitors wait for the storm to break. Award winning South African author, Ingrid Winterbach, stretches the intrigue, building the tension to its violent, eruptive end. Racial conflict and friendships burn, and lovers meet in the cemetery. Natural healer Basil collects native remedies from the veld and foresees death. Researcher Karolina follows the elusive, velvet moth in search of her father’s approval. She is tormented by memories of her family and plagued by erotic, fanciful dreams. She dances herself into states of euphoria with the Kolyn fellow and plays snooker and drinks whisky with the ‘manne’ in the local hotel. She’s witness to murder and torment. And she falls in love with a gentle man in a town on the fringe of a changing South Africa. The Elusive Moth is a compelling and seductive read.
But this is not her only novel. Two of her novels reach back to the Boer War (called the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa): Buller se plan (Buller's Plan) and Niggie (idem). But this is not Boer propaganda. The former interweaves the story of a woman in the 1990s going to her brother's funeral by car and the story of the Battle of Colenso, where the British Army was led by Sir Redvers Buller, and the various obsessions of the fighters are examined. Niggie is the story of some men taking a traumatised Boer back to base who meet up with Niggie, an attractive redhead. We Brits may be the enemy, but Winterbach is not so black-and-white in her descriptions. This latter novel has recently appeared in Dutch translation.
See:
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/cca/images/tow/TOW2006/bios/Winterbach.htm