This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1973.
Breyten Breytenbach is a South African writer, poet, and painter who became internationally well-known as a dissident poet and vocal critic of South Africa under apartheid, and as a political prisoner of the National Party-led South African Government. Breytenbach is now informally considered by Afrikaans-speakers as their poet laureate and is one of the most important living poets in Afrikaans literature. He also holds French citizenship.
Mattheus Uys Krige was a South African writer of novels, short stories, poems and plays in Afrikaans and English. In Afrikaans literature, Krige is counted among the Dertigers. Uys Krige was, according to his friend Jack Cope, very much an exception among Afrikaner poets and writers of his generation due to his hostility to extreme Afrikaner nationalism, White Supremacism, and his literary translations of Latin American poetry by non-White authors into Afrikaans; which have had an enormous influence upon South African literature and culture. Later in his life, Krige served as a mentor and father figure to the Afrikaans literary movement known as die Sestigers; whom he convinced into speaking truth to power about the 1948–1994 rule of the National Party and its policies of both Apartheid and censorship in South Africa.
André Philippus Brink was a South African novelist, essayist and poet. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and taught English at the University of Cape Town.
Joan Helene Hambidge, is an Afrikaans poet, literary theorist and academic. She is a prolific poet in Afrikaans, controversial as a public figure and critic and notorious for her out-of-the-closet style of writing. Her theoretic contributions deal mainly with Roland Barthes, deconstruction, postmodernism, psychoanalysis and metaphysics.
Antjie Krog is a South African writer and academic, best known for her Afrikaans poetry, her reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and her 1998 book Country of My Skull. In 2004, she joined the Arts faculty of the University of the Western Cape as Extraordinary Professor.
The poetry of South Africa covers a broad range of themes, forms and styles. This article discusses the context that contemporary poets have come from and identifies the major poets of South Africa, their works and influence.
Marlene van Niekerk is a South African poet, writer, and academic. She is best known for her novels, the satirical tragicomedy Triomf (1994) and the Hertzog-winning Agaat (2004), which explore themes including the family, the change in power dynamics occasioned by the end of Apartheid, and inequalities of race, gender, and class. Van Niekerk is also an award-winning poet. She writes in her native tongue, Afrikaans, and teaches at Stellenbosch University.
Robert Knox ″Jack″ Cope was a South African novelist, short story writer, poet and editor.
Etienne van Heerden, born 3 December 1954, is a South African author.
South African literature is the literature of South Africa, which has 11 national languages: Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Pedi, Tswana, Venda, Swazi, Tsonga and Ndebele.
Afrikaans literature is literature written in Afrikaans. Afrikaans is the daughter language of 17th-century Dutch and is spoken by the majority of people in the Western Cape of South Africa and among Afrikaners and Coloured South Africans in other parts of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini. Afrikaans was historically one of the two official languages of South Africa, the other being English, but it currently shares the status of an "official language" with ten other languages.
The Sestigers (Sixtiers), also known as the Beweging van Sestig, were a dissident literary movement of Afrikaans-language poets and writers in South Africa under apartheid. The movement was started in the beachside Cape Town suburb of Clifton during the early 1960s by André Brink and Breyten Breytenbach, under the mentorship of Uys Krige and Jack Cope, and in continuation of a tradition in South African literature pioneered in the 1920s by Roy Campbell, William Plomer, and Laurens van der Post.
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.
Deon Godfrey Meyer is a South African thriller novelist, writing primarily in Afrikaans. His works have been translated into 28 languages. He has also written numerous scripts for television and film.
Christian Johan Barnard, known as Chris Barnard, was a South African author and movie scriptwriter. He was known for writing Afrikaans novels, novellas, columns, youth novels, short stories, plays, radio dramas, film scripts and television dramas.
Black Butterflies is an English-language Dutch drama film about the life of South-African Afrikaans poet and anti-apartheid political dissident Ingrid Jonker. The film was directed by Paula van der Oest and premiered in the Netherlands on February 6 before being released on 31 March 2011.
Rumours of Rain is a South African novel by André Brink, published in 1978. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is set on a South African farm during apartheid.
A Dry White Season is a novel written by Afrikaner novelist André Brink and first published by Taurus in 1979. The title quotes a line from the struggle poem For Don M. - Banned by Mongane Wally Serote. The novel focuses on the death during detention of a man wrongly suspected of being a black activist. The novel challenges apartheid, depicting the transformation of a ruling class Afrikaner's opposition to the governing white supremacist regime. The novel was initially banned in South Africa, though Brink had managed to get 3,000 copies published through an underground press.
An Instant in the Wind is a 1975 novel by André Brink which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Set in 1751, the novel focuses on the relationship of a white woman and a black slave. Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as beginning with conflict, but quickly descending into "sensual, cerebral dialogues on love and personhood."
