Gillian Slovo | |
|---|---|
 Slovo in 2011 | |
| Born | 15 March 1952 |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
| 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. Her family moved to London in 1964, as political exiles. [1] Her family is Jewish. [2]
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. [1]
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.[ citation needed ]
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.[ citation needed ]
With Victoria Brittain, Slovo wrote the play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, which was staged internationally in 2004. [3]
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.[ citation needed ]
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. [ citation needed ]
Slovo was the 25th president 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. [4]
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." [5] [6]
Source [7]
Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer and political activist. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, recognised as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writing has ... been of very great benefit to humanity".
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.
Ahdaf Soueif is an Egyptian novelist and political and cultural commentator.
Winifred Holtby was an English novelist and journalist, now best known for her novel South Riding, which was posthumously published in 1936.
Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) is a U.S. military joint task force based at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on the southeastern end of the base. JTF-GTMO falls under US Southern Command. Since January 2002 the command has operated the Guantanamo Bay detention camps Camp X-Ray and its successors Camp Delta, Camp V, and Camp Echo, where detained prisoners are held who have been captured in the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere since the September 11, 2001 attacks. From the command's founding in 2002 to early 2022, the detainee population has been reduced from 779 to 37. As of October 21, 2022, the unit is under the command of U.S. Army Brigadier General Scott W. Hiipakka.
Michael Wayne Rosen is a British children's author, poet, presenter, political columnist, broadcaster, activist, and academic, who is a professor of children's literature in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has written over 200 books for children and adults. Select books include We're Going on a Bear Hunt (1989) and Sad Book (2004). He served as Children's Laureate from June 2007 to June 2009. He won the 2023 PEN Pinter Prize, awarded by English PEN, for his "fearless" body of work.
Howard Eric Jacobson is a British novelist and journalist. He writes comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters. He is a Man Booker Prize winner.
Maxine Peake is an English actress and narrator. She is known for her roles as Twinkle in dinnerladies, a sitcom on BBC One (1998–2000), as Veronica Ball in Shameless, the comedy drama from Channel 4 (2004–2007), Martha Costello in the BBC One legal drama Silk (2011–2014), and Grace Middleton in the BBC One drama series The Village (2013–2014). In 2017, she starred in the Black Mirror episode "Metalhead". She has also played the title role in Hamlet, as well as the notorious serial killer Myra Hindley in See No Evil: The Moors Murders, the critically acclaimed 2006 dramatisation by ITV of the Moors murders.
Ronan Bennett is a Northern Irish novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as showrunner, writer and executive producer of the drug and gang-related crime drama television series Top Boy. His other writing credits include the 1997 crime film Face, the 2009 Michael Mann crime biopic Public Enemies and the 2017 BBC historical drama miniseries Gunpowder.
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.
Red dust or Red Dust may refer to:
The Golden PEN Award is a literary award established in 1993 by English PEN given annually to a British writer for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". The winner is chosen by the Board of English PEN. The award has previously been called the S.T. Dupont Golden Pen Award.
Kenneth Charles Loach is a British film director and screenwriter. His socially critical directing style and socialism are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty, homelessness, and labour rights.
There have been instances of antisemitism within the Labour Party of the United Kingdom (UK) since its establishment. One such example is canards about "Jewish finance" during the Boer War. In the 2000s, controversies arose over comments made by Labour politicians regarding an alleged "Jewish lobby", a comparison by London Labour politician Ken Livingstone of a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard, and a 2005 Labour attack on Jewish Conservative Party politician Michael Howard.
Jacqueline Walker is a British political activist and writer. She has been a teacher and anti-racism trainer. She is the author of a family memoir, Pilgrim State, and the co-writer and performer of a one-woman show, The Lynching. She held the roles of Vice-Chair of South Thanet Constituency Labour Party and Vice-Chair of Momentum before being suspended and ultimately expelled from the party for misconduct.
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.
Harsh Nayyar is an actor in movies and theatre.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
