Gillian Slovo | |
|---|---|
 Slovo in 2011 | |
| Born | 15 March 1952 |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester |
| Notable works | Red Dust (2000); Ice Road (2004) |
| Parents | Joe Slovo, Ruth First |
| Relatives | Shawn Slovo, Robyn Slovo (siblings) |
Gillian Slovo (born 15 March 1952) is a South African-born writer who lives in the UK. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.
Gillian Slovo was born on 15 March 1952 in Johannesburg, South Africa, a daughter of Joe Slovo and Ruth First. [1] Her family moved to London in 1964, as political exiles. [2] Her family is Jewish. [3]
Slovo attended the University of Manchester, graduating in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in the history and philosophy of science, before working as a journalist and television producer. [2]
Slovo's novels were at first predominantly of the crime and thriller genres, including a series featuring the detective Kate Baeier, but she has since written more literary fiction. Her 2000 work Red Dust , a courtroom drama that explores the meanings and effects of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was made into a film of the same name released in 2004, directed by Tom Hooper. [4]
Slovo's 2004 work Ice Road was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. The novel incorporates real events (the death of Sergey Kirov) with a fictionalised rendering of life during the Siege of Leningrad. [5]
With Victoria Brittain, Slovo wrote the play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, which was staged internationally in 2004. [6]
Slovo's 1997 memoir, Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country, is an account of her childhood in South Africa and her relationship with her parents Joe Slovo and Ruth First – both South African Communist Party leaders and figures in the anti-apartheid struggle who lived perilous lives of exile, armed resistance, and occasional imprisonment, which culminated in her mother's assassination by South African forces in 1982. [7] [8]
A family memoir in the form of a feature film, A World Apart (1988), was written by her sister Shawn Slovo and starred Barbara Hershey. [9]
Slovo was the 25th president (2020–2013) of the English Centre of International PEN, the worldwide writers fellowship. In 2012, she took part in a PEN International delegation to Mexico to protest against the killing of journalists in that country, alongside presidents of other PEN Centres and internationally prominent writers. [10]
In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, Slovo signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few." [11] [12] She is a supporter of the boycott of Israeli cultural institutions. She was an original signatory of the manifesto "Refusing Complicity in Israel's Literary Institutions". [13]
Source [14]
Joan Marie Ryan is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Enfield North from 1997 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2019. She was first elected as a Labour Party MP but later defected to join Change UK.
Yossel Mashel Slovo, commonly known as Joe Slovo, was a South African politician, and an opponent of the apartheid system. A Marxist-Leninist, he was a long-time leader and theorist in the South African Communist Party (SACP), a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC), and a commander of the ANC's military wing uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK). Slovo was a delegate to the multiracial Congress of the People of June 1955 which drew up the Freedom Charter. He was imprisoned for six months in 1960, and emerged as a leader of uMkhonto we Sizwe the following year. He lived in exile from 1963 to 1990, conducting operations against the apartheid régime from the United Kingdom, Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia. In 1990, he returned to South Africa, and took part in the negotiations that ended apartheid. He became known for proposing the "sunset clauses" covering the 5 years following a democratic election, including guarantees and concessions to all sides, and his fierce non-racialist stance. After the elections of 1994, he became Minister for Housing in Nelson Mandela's government. He died of cancer in 1995.
Heloise Ruth First OLG was a South African anti-apartheid activist and scholar. She was assassinated in Mozambique, where she was working in exile, by a parcel bomb built by South African police.
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Shawn Slovo is a South African screenwriter, best known for the film A World Apart, based on her childhood under apartheid. She is the daughter of South African Communist Party leaders Joe Slovo and Ruth First. She wrote the screenplay for the 2006 film Catch a Fire, and for the 2001 film Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
Robyn Slovo is a South African film producer, based in the UK. Her work includes the 2000 film Morvern Callar, the 2006 film Catch a Fire, and the 2011 film Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Red Dust is a 2000 novel written by South African-born Gillian Slovo that is structured around the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the fictional town Smitsrivier. Its key theme centers around the question of truth.
There is a wide range of ways in which people have represented apartheid in popular culture. During (1948–1994) and following the apartheid era in South Africa, apartheid has been referenced in many books, films, and other forms of art and literature.
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Kezia Alexandra Ross Dugdale is a Scottish former politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2015 to 2017. A former member of the Scottish Labour Party and Co-operative Party, she was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lothian region from 2011 to 2019.
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Marc Wadsworth is a British black rights campaigner, broadcast and print journalist and BBC filmmaker and radio producer. He founded the Anti-Racist Alliance in 1991 and two years later, also helped set up the justice campaign for murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. Wadsworth launched an early citizen-journalism news portal, The-Latest.com. In 2008, Wadsworth's reporting triggered the resignation of Mayor of London Boris Johnson's spokesman.
Antisemitism within the Labour Party of the United Kingdom (UK) dates back to its establishment. One early example was comments about "Jewish finance" during the Boer War. In the 2000s, controversies arose over comments by Labour politicians regarding an alleged "Jewish lobby", a comparison by Ken Livingstone of a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard, and a 2005 Labour attack on Jewish Conservative Party politician Michael Howard.
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Victoria Brittain is a British journalist and author who lived and worked for many years in Africa, the US, and Asia, including 20 years at The Guardian, where she eventually became associate foreign editor. In the 1980s, she worked closely with the anti-apartheid movement, interviewing activists from the United Democratic Front and the Southern African liberation movements. A notable campaigner for human rights throughout the developing world, Brittain has contributed widely to many international publications, writing particularly on Africa, the US and the Middle East, and has also authored books and plays, including 2013's Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror.
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