André Philippus Brink, OIS (29 May 1935 – 6 February 2015) was a South African novelist, essayist and poet. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and taught English at the University of Cape Town.[1][2]
In the 1960s Brink, Ingrid Jonker, Etienne Leroux 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. 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.
During his stay, he came across an undeniable fact that changed his mind forever: black students were treated on an equal social basis with other students. Back in South Africa, he became one of the most prominent of young Afrikaans writers, along with the novelist Etienne Leroux and the poet Breyten Breytenbach, to challenge the apartheid policy of the National party through his writings. During a second sojourn in France between 1967 and 1968, he hardened his political position against Apartheid, and began writing both in Afrikaans and English to enlarge his audience and outplay the censure he was facing in his native country at the time.
Indeed, his novel Kennis van die aand (1973) was the first Afrikaans book to be banned by the South African government.[3] André Brink translated Kennis van die aand into English and published it abroad as Looking on Darkness. This was his first self-translation.[4] After that, André Brink wrote his works simultaneously in English and Afrikaans.[5] In 1975, he obtained his PhD in Literature at Rhodes University.
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.[6]
He died 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.[7] He was married five times. Brink's son, Anton Brink, is an artist.[8]
Works
For a more comprehensive publication list, see the Afrikaans article on André P. Brink.
^Brink, André (11 September 2010). "A Long Way From Mandela's Kitchen". New York Times. Retrieved 15 October 2012. One of my novels had the dubious distinction of being the first book in Afrikaans to be banned under apartheid.
^Brink, André (2003): "English and the Afrikaans Writer" in: Steven G. Kellman Switching languages. Translingual writers reflect on their craft. University of Nebraska Press, p. 218.
