Afrikaans Literature, anno 2008
At first glance, there is every reason for Brits to ignore Afrikaans literature: first of all the Boers fought us in two wars around 1900 (remember Churchill's early years?); then the Afrikaners have been blamed for the apartheid r?gime (although the system was in fact devised by a Dutch immigrant!).
Anyway, until recently, only politicised anti-apartheid authors writing in Afrikaans were read in English, and maybe not so much in Britain. These included the then exiled poet Breyten Breytenbach and the novelist Andr? Brink. But things have changed. Apartheid has gone and the Afrikaners and their white-skinned English-speaking colleagues no longer rule the roost since Mandela, and latterly Mbeki, hold the whip handle, instead of Verwoerd, Vorster and De Klerk. And everyday life is permissible again as the topic of prose.
Obviously, Afrikaners have enjoyed a degree of privilege over past decades. So that quietly, and unobserved, owing to the international boycott of South African culture for a couple of decades, there is now a new generation of authors, not all continually writing about the traumas of apartheid.
In the same way that German or Israeli writers will occasionally stray into Holocaust territory, so present-day Afrikaans authors do not obsessively shun the unpalatable past. But nowadays, apartheid and the war in Angola are not the central focus of Afrikaans writing. So now that an Afrikaans woman author, Marlene van Niekerk, has been shortlisted for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, this would seem to indicate that Afrikaans writing is kosher once again in polite circles, so to speak.
As there's plenty on the internet about Marlene van Niekerk (and will be more, should she win the Independent prize), I would like initially to concentrate on three other contemporary Afrikaans woman authors: Petra M?ller, Ingrid Winterbach and Rachelle Greeff.
Petra M?ller (born 1935)
M?ller's stories have been recently collected in a volume entitled Desembers (Decembers). She tend to deal with misfits and outsiders in her stories. While South African readers will soon identify which ethnic group any given character belongs to via their name or other description, ethnic background is not M?ller's focus. Landscape is important. They shape the characters more than race or language. M?ller keeps up a tension between autobiography and pure fiction. There are quite a few children as protagonists. The title story is about a child that goes down to the beach during the December summer holidays (Southern Hemisphere, remember!) and adds to her sandcastle near the water's edge. But when she realises that other children are adding bits, i.e., know of its existence, she goes out one morning and destroys it. M?ller has written poetry in both Afrikaans and English.
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
Rachelle Greeff (born 1957)
This Cape Town author and journalist has written mainly short-stories, including the recent collection Palazzo van die laaste dans (Palazzo of the Last Dance; 2006). Here, the leitmotif of the ten stories is dance. While some of her journalistic works appears in English-language newspapers, she sticks to Afrikaans for her stories and novels. Her second and longest novel to date is Hanna (idem; 2002) which tells the story of how her life is shattered when, after preparing a welcome feast, Hanna hears what her son Wim has to say on his return from abroad.
See: http://www.stellenboschwriters.com/greef.html
All three of these writers deserve to be paid much more attention in the English-speaking world, and, of course, to have more of their stories and novels translated.
At first glance, there is every reason for Brits to ignore Afrikaans literature: first of all the Boers fought us in two wars around 1900 (remember Churchill's early years?); then the Afrikaners have been blamed for the apartheid r?gime (although the system was in fact devised by a Dutch immigrant!).
Anyway, until recently, only politicised anti-apartheid authors writing in Afrikaans were read in English, and maybe not so much in Britain. These included the then exiled poet Breyten Breytenbach and the novelist Andr? Brink. But things have changed. Apartheid has gone and the Afrikaners and their white-skinned English-speaking colleagues no longer rule the roost since Mandela, and latterly Mbeki, hold the whip handle, instead of Verwoerd, Vorster and De Klerk. And everyday life is permissible again as the topic of prose.
Obviously, Afrikaners have enjoyed a degree of privilege over past decades. So that quietly, and unobserved, owing to the international boycott of South African culture for a couple of decades, there is now a new generation of authors, not all continually writing about the traumas of apartheid.
In the same way that German or Israeli writers will occasionally stray into Holocaust territory, so present-day Afrikaans authors do not obsessively shun the unpalatable past. But nowadays, apartheid and the war in Angola are not the central focus of Afrikaans writing. So now that an Afrikaans woman author, Marlene van Niekerk, has been shortlisted for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, this would seem to indicate that Afrikaans writing is kosher once again in polite circles, so to speak.
As there's plenty on the internet about Marlene van Niekerk (and will be more, should she win the Independent prize), I would like initially to concentrate on three other contemporary Afrikaans woman authors: Petra M?ller, Ingrid Winterbach and Rachelle Greeff.
Petra M?ller (born 1935)
M?ller's stories have been recently collected in a volume entitled Desembers (Decembers). She tend to deal with misfits and outsiders in her stories. While South African readers will soon identify which ethnic group any given character belongs to via their name or other description, ethnic background is not M?ller's focus. Landscape is important. They shape the characters more than race or language. M?ller keeps up a tension between autobiography and pure fiction. There are quite a few children as protagonists. The title story is about a child that goes down to the beach during the December summer holidays (Southern Hemisphere, remember!) and adds to her sandcastle near the water's edge. But when she realises that other children are adding bits, i.e., know of its existence, she goes out one morning and destroys it. M?ller has written poetry in both Afrikaans and English.
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
Rachelle Greeff (born 1957)
This Cape Town author and journalist has written mainly short-stories, including the recent collection Palazzo van die laaste dans (Palazzo of the Last Dance; 2006). Here, the leitmotif of the ten stories is dance. While some of her journalistic works appears in English-language newspapers, she sticks to Afrikaans for her stories and novels. Her second and longest novel to date is Hanna (idem; 2002) which tells the story of how her life is shattered when, after preparing a welcome feast, Hanna hears what her son Wim has to say on his return from abroad.
See: http://www.stellenboschwriters.com/greef.html
All three of these writers deserve to be paid much more attention in the English-speaking world, and, of course, to have more of their stories and novels translated.
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