Christiaan Maurits van den Heever, almost universally known C.M. van den Heever (27 February 1902 in the concentration camp near

Norvalspont Norvalspont is a small town in Pixley ka Seme District Municipality in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The name is Afrikaans for ''Norval’s ferry'', and named after an enterprising Scot who constructed a ferry here in 1848. The settl ...

in Cape Province, now

Northern Cape The Northern Cape is the largest and most sparsely populated province of South Africa. It was created in 1994 when the Cape Province was split up. Its capital is Kimberley. It includes the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, part of the Kgalagadi T ...

Province,

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

– 8 July 1957), was an

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...

-language novelist, poet, essayist, and biographer. Counted among the

Dertigers The Dertigers, or "writers of the thirties," are a group of Afrikaans-language South African poets who achieved new heights of eloquence in the young language's early decades of the 20th century. The Dertigers arose after the Tweede Asem ("Second ...

, van den Heever is noted for his most famous novels: ''Somer'' ("Summer") and ''Laat vrugte'' ("Late Fruits"). The latter won the

Hertzog Prize The Hertzog Prize (or Hertzogprys) is an annual award given to Afrikaans writers by the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (South African Academy for the Sciences and Art), formerly the South African Academy for Language, Literature a ...

for prose in 1942. Van den Heever studied at the

University of the Free State The University of the Free State is a multi-campus public university in Bloemfontein, the capital of the Free State (province), Free State and the judicial capital of South Africa. It was first established as an institution of higher learning in ...

in Bloemfontein and the University of Utrecht in

the Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Upon his return to South Africa, he gained a teaching position at the University of the Free State. After completing his dissertation on the poet Totius, he finished his academic career at

Witwatersrand University The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), is a multi-campus South African public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg. It is more commonly known as Wits University or Wits ( or ). The university ...

Bibliography

*Juan Zarandona-Santiago Martin (trad.), ''"Verano. Clásico de la literatura afrikaans"'' de C.M. van den Heever, Valladolid (Spain), Publicaciones Universidad de Valladolid, 2002, 1902 births 1957 deaths People from Umsobomvu Local Municipality Afrikaans-language poets Afrikaans-language writers Afrikaner people South African people of Dutch descent South African poets Hertzog Prize winners for poetry Hertzog Prize winners for prose University of the Free State alumni Utrecht University alumni 20th-century poets {{SouthAfrica-writer-stub