Tony Eprile | |
---|---|
Born | 1955 Johannesburg, South Africa |
Occupation | Novelist |
Education | Connecticut College; Brown University |
Genre | Drama, fiction, short stories |
Notable awards | Koret Jewish Book Award (2005) |
Tony Eprile is a South African and American writer. His 2004 novel, The Persistence of Memory , won the Koret Jewish Book Award in 2005, beating out The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. [1] [2]
Tony Eprile was born in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, South Africa in 1955 to Jewish parents. [3] [4] His mother, Liesel Weil was a from a well-to-do German Jewish family in Frankfurt that were adherents of Liberal Judaism. [5] Amid the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, she emigrated to South Africa in 1936 at the age of seventeen. [5] Eprile's father, Cecil Eprile, a Scottish Jew, also arrived in South Africa in 1936. [5] Cecil was the editor of the Golden City Post, a liberal newspaper catering to a black South African readership and advocating for the end of apartheid. [6] [5]
In the late 1960s, he emigrated to England with his parents and brother when he was 12 years-old. [5] The family then emigrated to the United States between 1970 and 1972 [7] [8] At the age of 17, Eprile then a recent arrival in the United States, took a writing class at college. He produced a South African-themed short story titled, "Cough’s Tokoloshe", with the tokoloshe employed as a metaphor for white fears. Year later, he gave a copy of the story to a visiting poet, Robert Hayden. Hayden invited him to talk to him about the story, and they became friends, with Hayden acting as an important mentor to Eprile. [9]
He attended Connecticut College, graduating with a BA in Anthropology. He later graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Brown University. [10]
Eprile is the author of the 1989 book Temporary Sojourner and Other South African Stories, [11] which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. [12]
His 2004 book The Persistence of Memory [7] [13] [14] won the Koret Jewish Book Award. [15] Anderson Tepper, writing in The Forward , speculated that the novel "just might prove to be the [South African] Jewish community’s masterpiece." [16] The novel was also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. [17] It was also listed as a best book of 2004 by The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times . [18]
He has taught at Northwestern University, Williams College, Bennington College, Lesley University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. [19]
He has also published guest columns, book reviews, literary criticism and interviews with writers for titles such as The New York Times , The Nation , The Washington Post , Tablet and The Johannesburg Review of Books . [20] [21] [22] [5] [23] He acts as an Editorial Advisory Panel member for The Johannesburg Review of Books with Antjie Krog and Lauren Beukes, among others. [23] [24]
Eprile lives in Vermont in the United States with his wife, Judith D. Schwartz, whom he married in 1989. [25] [26]
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".
Delmore Schwartz was an American poet and short story writer.
Anthony James Leon is a South African politician who served as leader of the opposition from 1999-2007 as leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA). He led the DA from its inception in 2000, until his retirement from leadership in 2007. Before that, he led the Democratic Party from 1994. He is the longest-serving leader of the official opposition in parliament since the advent of democracy in 1994. Although still a member of the DA, he served as the South African Ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay under the African National Congress government from 2009 to 2012.
In Nguni mythology, Tikoloshe, Tikolosh, Tokoloshe, Tokolotshe, Thokolosi, or Hili is a dwarf-like water spirit. It is a mischievous and evil spirit that can become invisible by drinking water or swallowing a stone. Tokoloshes are called upon by malevolent people to cause trouble for others. At its least harmful, a tokoloshe can be used to scare children, but its power extends to causing illness or even the death of the victim. Protection against them includes traditional methods such as raising beds off the ground and interventions by spiritual figures like pastors with an apostolic calling or traditional healers (sangomas), who are seen to possess the power to banish them. The Tikoloshe is often referenced satirically to critique the influence of superstitions on behaviour and society.
Judith Malina was a German-born American actress, director and writer. With her husband Julian Beck, Malina co-founded The Living Theatre, a radical political theatre troupe that rose to prominence in New York City and Paris during the 1950s and 1960s. The Living Theatre and its founders were the subject of the 1983 documentary Signals Through The Flames.
Joseph Salem Lelyveld was an American journalist. He was executive editor of The New York Times from 1994 to 2001, and interim executive editor in 2003 after the resignation of Howell Raines. He was a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author, and a contributor to the New York Review of Books.
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Mark Behr was a Tanzanian-born writer who grew up in South Africa. He was professor of English literature and creative writing at Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee. He also taught in the MA program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Rachel Zadok is a South African writer and a Whitbread First Novel Award nominee (2005). She is the author of the novels Gem Squash Tokoloshe and Sister-Sister.
Frederick Busch was an American writer who authored nearly thirty books, including volumes of short stories and novels.
The Koret Jewish Book Award is an annual award that recognizes "recently published books on any aspect of Jewish life in the categories of biography/autobiography and literary studies, fiction, history and philosophy/thought published in, or translated into, English." The award was established in 1998 by the Koret Foundation, in cooperation with the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, to increase awareness of the best new Jewish books and their authors.
Lynne Sharon Schwartz is an American prose and poetry writer.
The Persistence of Memory is a novel by Tony Eprile. It was published in 2004 by W. W. Norton & Company.
Howard Schwartz is an American folklorist, author, poet, and editor of dozens of books. He has won the international Koret Jewish Book Award, for the book Before You Were Born, and won a 2005 National Jewish Book Award for Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. He has been featured in the Jewish Children's Book Project, local media in his hometown of Saint Louis, The Jerusalem Post, and The Canadian Jewish News, as well as in many other publications.
Mark Gevisser is a South African author and journalist. His latest book is The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers (2020). Previous books include A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream and Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir. His journalism has appeared in many publications, including The Guardian, The New York Times, Granta, and the New York Review of Books.
Shira Nayman is a South African, Australian and American novelist, short story writer and clinical psychologist. She is best known for her collection Awake in the Dark, published in 2006.
Clive Hirschhorn is a South African writer and critic known for his long tenure as film and theater critic for the British Sunday Express newspaper and as the author of several books.
The South African Union for Progressive Judaism (SAUPJ) is an affiliate of the World Union for Progressive Judaism and supports 11 progressive congregations. Rabbi Moses Cyrus Weiler, a founder of Reform Judaism in the country, led the country's first Reform synagogue, Temple Israel in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Weiler is credited with growing the movement, to represent 15-17% of South African Jewry and establishing 25 congregations in the country. A 2020 joint study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and the University of Cape Town showed that 12% of Jews identified as Progressive and that in relative terms the progressive strands are increasing after falling to 7% in 1998 and 2005 studies. In Johannesburg, the community accounts for 7% of the city's Jewry, rising to 18% in Cape Town and 25% in Durban.
The Johannesburg Review of Books is a South African online magazine based on other literary magazines such as The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. Its bi-monthly issues include reviews, essays, poetry, photographs, and short fiction focused predominantly but not exclusively on South Africa and other African countries.