Friday, February 20, 2015

Andre Brink, South African Literary Lion



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André Brink in 1983. His work was often cited alongside that of Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee, and fell afoul of censors. CreditB. Aubert/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

André Brink, a towering South African literary presence for decades whose work in English and Afrikaans fell afoul of apartheid-era censors, died Friday, South African news reports said, citing his publisher, N.B. Publishers. He was 79.
Mr. Brink died while traveling from Europe to Cape Town on a flight departing from Amsterdam late Friday. The cause of his death was not immediately made known.
Mr. Brink’s work was often cited alongside that of Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee as an exemplar of South Africa’s ability to transform the experience of harsh racial politics into literature with a global reach. He had been returning from a visit to Belgium, where he received an honorary doctorate, according to the South African SAPA news agency.
The language of many of his early works was Afrikaans, the mother-tongue of the Afrikaner minority whose leaders came to power in 1948 and set the country on the path to policies of social engineering and racial division that ended formally with the first free election in 1994, which brought Nelson Mandela to power.
Mr. Brink belonged to a group of Afrikaans writers known as Die Sestigers, meaning roughly the generation of the 1960s. According to Hermann Giliomee, a prominent historian, the group “embraced secularization, modernity, racial tolerance and sexual freedom, and used modern literary techniques and subject matter to explore these themes.”
Mr. Giliomee added in a Web posting, “This literature helped to change the political imagination of the Afrikaans reading public in subtle yet profound ways. They offered a new conceptualization of the Afrikaners and their history that differed starkly from the image the political leaders and cultural leadership tried to project of the Afrikaners as a people determined to crush all threats to their survival.”
But for many outside South Africa, Mr. Brink’s most accessible work came in his novels in English such as “Rumors of Rain” and “A Dry White Season.”
At the time of these works’ publication, the white authorities frequently deployed draconian censorship and other laws to ban Mr. Brink’s work, and he was critical of the censors themselves. “Even in chains, the many voices of the writer must continue to speak,” he once said while accepting one of many literary prizes.
According to SAPA, Mr. Brink “was continually watched by the security police, his phone tapped, and his mail intercepted and occasionally stolen” in the apartheid era.
André Brink was born on May 29, 1935, in the small town of Vrede in a profoundly traditional and conservative area of South Africa, then called the Orange Free State. He studied English and Afrikaans at the university in Potchefstroom. He went on to Paris to study comparative literature and was often quoted as referring to France as his “second homeland.”
After his return to South Africa, he taught at universities in Grahamstown and Cape Town.
On South Africa’s Mail and Guardian news website, Shaun de Waal, a senior editor, said that in 1974, a novel published by Mr. Brink about a man of mixed race who murders his white lover “was the first work in Afrikaans to be banned by the apartheid government. Brink translated the text into English, as ‘Looking on Darkness,’ and began to reach an international audience.”
“His later novels were written in both English and Afrikaans and published in both languages, with the exception of some critical works and the semi-autobiographical ‘States of Emergency’ (1988), which came out in English only,” Mr. de Waal wrote on Saturday.
In his later years, Mr. de Waal said, Mr. Brink turned to autobiography, but he also translated many foreign writers into Afrikaans and wrote works of criticism.

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JOHANNESBURG — Prolific author, Andre Brink, who used his work to question the policies of South Africa's apartheid regime, has died, his publishers said Saturday. He was 79 years old.
Brink died aboard a KLM flight travelling from the Netherlands to the South African city of Cape Town on Friday evening, the South African Press Association reported. Brink was travelling from Belgium, where he was receiving an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Louvain.
In his speech during the ceremony, Brink spoke about the importance of questioning, said Eloise Wessels, head of NB Publishers.
"That is how he lived and that same search underpinned all his writing," Wessels said in an email to The Associated Press.
Brink made his debut in 1962, and soon became part of a literary movement, along with poet Ingrid Jonker and fellow author Breyten Breytenbach, who used the Afrikaans language to oppose the apartheid regime.
His 1975 book, "Looking on Darkness," the first of Brink's books distributed to the United States, was banned by the South African government until 1982. Brink wrote his novels in English and Afrikaans, in an attempt to buck censorship.
Internationally, Brink was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature several times, according to NB publishers. Brink was twice shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker prize, in 1976 for his book "An Instant in the Wind," and again for his 1978 novel "Rumors of Rain." In 2012, he was long listed for the novel "Philida," his last.
His novel, "A Dry White Season," was turned into a 1989 film, starring Donald Sutherland, Susan Sarandon and Marlon Brando, who earned a nomination for an Academy Award for an actor in a supporting role.
Brink was born May 29, 1935 in the town of Vrede, in the central Free State province in South Africa. He was a playwright, literary critic, translator and academic, and wrote more than 25 novels and over a dozen plays, according to the publishers.
Brink is survived by his wife Karina, four children, and six grandchildren. He was working on another novel at the time of his death, said Wessels.
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André Philippus BrinkOIS (29 May 1935 – 6 February 2015) was a South African novelist. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and was a Professor of English at theUniversity of Cape Town.
In the 1960s he, Ingrid Jonker and Breyten Breytenbach were key figures in the significant Afrikaans literary movement known as Die Sestigers ("The Sixty-ers"). These writers sought to use Afrikaans as a language to speak against the apartheid government, and also to bring into Afrikaans literature the influence of contemporary English and French trends.
His novel Kennis van die aand (1973) was the first Afrikaans book to be banned by the South African government.[1] André Brink translated Kennis van die aand into English and published it abroad as Looking on Darkness. This was his first self-translation.[2] After that, André Brink wrote his works simultaneously in English and Afrikaans.[3]
While Brink's early novels were especially concerned with apartheid, his later work engaged the new range of issues posed by life in a democratic South Africa.

Biography[edit]

Brink was born in Vrede, in the Free State. He was married five times. Brink's son, Anton Brink, is an artist.[4]
Brink moved to Lydenburg and matriculated at Lydenburg High school in 1952 with seven distinctions, the second student from the then Transvaal to achieve this feat.
In 2008, in an echo of a scene from his novel A Chain of Voices, his family was beset by tragedy when his nephew Adri Brink was murdered in front of his wife and children in their Gauteng home.[5]
He died on 6 February 2015 on a flight from Amsterdam to South Africa from Belgium, where he had received an honorary doctorate from the Belgian Francophone Université Catholique de Louvain.[6]

Works[edit]

For a more comprehensive publication list, see the Afrikaans article on André P. Brink.

Novels[edit]

  • The Ambassador
  • Looking on Darkness
  • An Instant in the Wind (1975)
  • Rumours of Rain (1978)
  • A Dry White Season (1979)
  • A Chain of Voices
André Brink
  • The Wall of the Plague
  • States of Emergency
  • An Act of Terror
  • The First Life of Adamastor (1993)
  • On the Contrary
  • Imaginings of Sand
  • Devil's Valley
  • The Rights of Desire
  • Anderkant die Stilte (2002)
  • Before I Forget (2004)
  • The Other Side of Silence (2004)
  • Praying Mantis (2005)
  • The Blue Door (2006)
  • Other Lives (2008)
  • Philida (2012)

Memoirs[edit]

  • A Fork in the Road (2009)

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André Philippus Brink, (May 29, 1935 – February 6, 2015) was a South African novelist. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and was a Professor of English at the University of Cape Town.  .
In the 1960s he, Ingrid Jonker and Breyten Breytenbach were key figures in the significant Afrikaans literary movement known as Die Sestigers ("The Sixty-ers"). These writers sought to use Afrikaans as a language to speak against the apartheid government, and also to bring into Afrikaans literature the influence of contemporary English and French trends.
His novel Kennis van die aand (1973) was the first Afrikaans book to be banned by the South African government.  André Brink translated Kennis van die aand into English and published it abroad as Looking on Darkness. This was his first self-translation.  After that, André Brink wrote his works simultaneously in English and Afrikaans.
While Brink's early novels were especially concerned with apartheid, his later work engaged the new range of issues posed by life in a democratic South Africa.

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