Marlene van Niekerk

Marlene van Niekerk
Van Niekerk (2018)
Born	(1954-11-10) 10 November 1954 (age 69)
Nationality	South African
Notable awards	Ingrid Jonker Prize Noma Award for Publishing in Africa Hertzog Prize (twice) Order of Ikhamanga

Marlene van Niekerk (born 10 November 1954) 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.

Biography

Marlene van Niekerk was born on 10 November 1954 on Tygerhoek farm near

Van Niekerk later taught philosophy at the University of Zululand and the University of South Africa, and from 1989 taught Afrikaans and Dutch literature at the University of the Witwatersrand.^[4][3] Currently, she is associate professor at Stellenbosch University's Afrikaans and Dutch department, where she teaches creative writing.^[4][5][2] She has published two novels, five volumes of poetry, and several short story collections.

Theatre

While an undergraduate, van Niekerk wrote three plays for amateur theatre. In 1979, between her Master's and her doctorate, she moved to Germany to study directing as an apprentice at theatres in Stuttgart and Mainz.^[1] In April 2011, her play Die korstondige raklewe van Anastasia W, set in a funeral parlour, was staged in Stellenbosch under the direction of Marthinus Basson.^[6] It divided audiences (and provoked several angry letters to the editor in Afrikaans newspapers),^[7] with one favourable review calling it "a baroque assault of forms, idioms, wordplay, lyricism, operatic tragic-comic interludes, Brechtian theatrical alienation, and ripping symbolic violence."^[6]

Novels

Triomf (1994)

Triomf (1994) is a tragicomedy about the Benade family: Mol, her brothers Treppie and Pop, and her son Lambert. Unemployed, they live in Triomf (“triumph”), a poor white suburb of Johannesburg, which was built on the ruins of Sophiatown, the famous black township, after the Apartheid government razed it down in the 1950s. The book opens in late 1993, with South Africa’s first democratic elections impending, and chronicles the Benades’ relationships with each other – they reel between hostility and (sometimes incestuous) intimacy – and their difficulties adapting to the new, post-Apartheid South Africa.^[8] Among other themes, the novel explores Apartheid's class dimensions and the status of poor whites in South Africa, who, van Niekerk suggests, were ostensibly the beneficiaries of Apartheid, but in fact became downtrodden and disfigured by its ideology.^[9]

It received generally, but not exclusively, positive reviews, both in South Africa and abroad. The New York Times called it South Africa's "only world-class tragicomic novel, the kind of book that stabs at your heart while it has you rolling on the floor."^[8] Reviewers complimented the effectiveness of van Niekerk's satirical treatment of the Benades' racism and sexism.^[10][11]

Triomf was dramatised in a 2008 film, directed by Michael Raeburn.

Agaat (2004)

Agaat (2004), van Niekerk's second novel, takes place in 1996, when Kamilla (Milla) de Wet is in the late stages of

The novel was met with critical acclaim. Liesl Schillinger of the New York Times called its register "more generous and humane" than that of Triomf, and said that it exemplified "the reason people read novels, and the reason authors write them."^[11] Writing in Bookforum, Mary Gaitskill said it was "extraordinary."^[13] Agaat won seven South African literary awards, and Michiel Heyns won the 2007 Sol Plaatje Prize for Translation for his translation of Agaat into English.^[14]

Asked about Agaat's depiction of the separation between men and women, van Niekerk said that she was inspired by gender dynamics in Afrikaner culture, and by her experience of being treated, as a lesbian, as an outsider in the Afrikaner community.^[5]

Bibliography

Novels

• Triomf (1994; English version: Triomf,^[15] trans. Leon de Kock, 2000)
• Agaat (2004; English version: Agaat or The Way of the Women, trans. Michiel Heyns, 2007)
• Memorandum: 'n verhaal met skilderye, with pictures by Adriaan van Zyl (2006, English version: Memorandum: A Story with Paintings, trans. Michiel Heyns)

Poetry

• Sprokkelster, 1977
• Groenstaar, 1983
• Kaar, 2013
• Gesant van die mispels: gedigte by skilderye van Adriaen Coorte ca. 1659-1707 (2017)
• In die stille agterkamer: gedigte by skilderye van Jan Mankes 1889-1920 (2017)

Short stories

• Die vrou wat haar verkyker vergeet het (1992)
• Die verleiding van Margarethe van Vliet deur die misbruik van die poësie en ander verhale (1999) (erotic stories in Dutch)
• Die sneeuslaper: verhale (2010; English version: The Snow Sleeper, trans. Marius Swart, 2019)
• The Swan Whisperer (2015; trans. van Niekerk and Marius Swart)

Van Niekerk's work has also been translated into French, Danish, Italian, Swedish, and, frequently, Dutch.^[1]

Awards

Novels

• M-Net Literary Award
  (1995) for Triomf
• CNA Prize
  (1995) for Triomf
• Noma Award for Publishing in Africa (1995) for Triomf
• M-Net Literary Award
  (2005) for Agaat
• W.A. Hofmeyr Prize
  (2005) for Agaat
• University of Johannesburg Prize for Afrikaans Creative Writing (2005) for Agaat
• Hertzog Prize (2007) for Agaat
• Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns C.L. Engelbrecht Prize (2007) for Agaat
• Sunday Times Literary Award
  (2007) for Agaat
• Helgaard Steyn Prize (2008) for Agaat
• Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2008) for Agaat

Poetry and short stories

• Eugène Marais Prize (1977) for Sprokkelster
• Ingrid Jonker Prize (1978) for Sprokkelster
• University of Johannesburg Prize for Afrikaans Creative Writing (2011) for Die Sneeuslaper^[16]
• University of Johannesburg Prize for Afrikaans Creative Writing (2014) for Kaar
• Elisabeth Eybers Prize
  (2014) for Kaar
• Hertzog Prize (2014) for Kaar

In 2011, the