Etienne van Heerden
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Etienne van Heerden, born 3 December 1954, is a South African author.


Biography

Van Heerden was born in 1954, six years after the official advent of
apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...
. His mother was an English speaking mathematics teacher. His father, 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 ...
speaking
merino The Merino is a breed or group of breeds of domestic sheep, characterised by very fine soft wool. It was established in Spain near the end of the Middle Ages, and was for several centuries kept as a strict Spanish monopoly; exports of the bree ...
stud breeder, farmed the family farm in the
Karoo The Karoo ( ; from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe !Orakobab or Khoemana word ''ǃ’Aukarob'' "Hardveld") is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its ext ...
. Van Heerden was reared Afrikaans, with English reserved for use at home on Tuesdays, and learned from comics ordered from London. Due to being born blind in the right eye, he was not called up for combat duty, but served as a dog handler, playing his alsatian at major festivals. Van Heerden initially studied law, and was admitted to the South African Side Bar as attorney. He freelanced as deputy sheriff for the Civil Court, and moved about in the townships around Cape Town, dispensing civil summonses and learning a great deal about life in these suppressed communities. As a young practitioner, his clients were mostly from the black and coloured crime-ridden communities around Cape Town. Van Heerden also lectured Legal Practice at the Peninsula Technikon and spent two years in advertising. At age thirty, with the birth of his eldest daughter, Van Heerden left the routine of a budding Cape Town advertising agency. He and his family relocated to northern
Natal NATAL or Natal may refer to: Places * Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, a city in Brazil * Natal, South Africa (disambiguation), a region in South Africa ** Natalia Republic, a former country (1839–1843) ** Colony of Natal, a former British colony ...
where he started out on his academic career in Literature at the
University of Zululand The University of Zululand or UniZulu is the only comprehensive tertiary educational institution north of the Tugela River in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Its new status is in accordance with South Africa's National Plan for Higher Education ...
. His PhD was a study on engagement and postmodernism. During the 1980s he was member of a group of Afrikaans writers secretly meeting the banned ANC of Mandela and exiled writers at the (now famous) Victoria Falls Writers’ Conference, held in
Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...
. Van Heerden is seen as member of a generation of Afrikaans artists who contributed significantly to opening up the Afrikaner psyche to change. He regularly teaches at universities in Europe, and has been Writer in Residence at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, and the
University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp ( nl, Universiteit Antwerpen) is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UA'', but ''UAntwerpen'' is more recently used. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 stud ...
in Belgium. He was a member of the University of Iowa's prestigious
International Writing Program The International Writing Program (IWP) is a writing residency for international artists in Iowa City, Iowa. Since 2014, the program offers online courses to many writers and poets around the world. Since its inception in 1967, the IWP has hosted o ...
in 1990, and has been back on visits to this university, of which he is an Honorary Fellow in Writing. He has regularly read his fiction at events such as the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, the Winter Nights Festival in the Hague, Netherlands, the Time of the Writer Festival in Berlin, Germany, the
Zimbabwe International Book Fair The Zimbabwe International Book Fair was held for the first time in 1983 in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. It was founded by David Martin (late), Phylis Johnson and Charles Mungoshi (late). Until the opening of the Cape Town Book Fair in 2006 i ...
and other festivals and events internationally. Despite at times at odds with the apartheid government, van Heerden never left South Africa permanently, and now teaches at the University of Cape Town, where he is the Hofmeyr Professor in the School of Languages and Literatures, and chairs the Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies Section. His current activities at the University of Cape Town include the supervision of Creative Writing, where he has led a generation of young Afrikaans authors to published status, and the lecturing of courses in Literary Theory, Media Studies, and South African and Dutch Literature. Van Heerden is married to Kaia, a practising doctor, and lives in
Stellenbosch Stellenbosch (; )A Universal Pronounc ...
. The couple has two daughters, Imke and Menán. Although he lives in the Western Cape, Van Heerden returns, in his writing, to the Karoo of his childhood. He describes this arid and mythological part of South Africa's deep interior is his own "landscape of the mind". He serves on the board of directors of NB Publishers, which includes, amongst others, Kwela, Tafelberg, Best Books and Human and Rousseau publishers.


Awards

* ''Toorberg'' – WA Hofmeyr Award ( Via Afrika Awards);
ATKV The Afrikaans Language and Culture Association (Afrikaans: Afrikaanse Taal- en Kultuurvereniging), ATKV, is a society that aims to promote the Afrikaans language and culture. The association was founded in 1930 in Cape Town. Since its inception ...
-prys,
CNA Literary Award The Central News Agency Literary Award (CNA Literary Award, CNA Prize) was a major annual literary award in South Africa. It was named for the CNA chain of bookstores. Founded by Phillip Stein, it recognised works in prose and poetry, and in both t ...
; 1989
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 ...
(Hertzogprys) for prose * ''Die Swye van Mario Salviati'' – 2001
M-Net Literary Awards M-Net Literary Awards were a group of South African literary awards, awarded from 1991 to 2013. They were established and sponsored by M-Net (Electronic Media Network), a South African television station. The award was suspended indefinitely a ...
(Afrikaans category) * ''30 Nagte in Amsterdam'' – 2009
M-Net Literary Awards M-Net Literary Awards were a group of South African literary awards, awarded from 1991 to 2013. They were established and sponsored by M-Net (Electronic Media Network), a South African television station. The award was suspended indefinitely a ...
(Afrikaans category); 2009 WA Hofmeyr Award ( Via Afrika Awards); 2009
UJ Prize UJ may refer to: Universities: * University of Jaffna, in Sri Lanka * Jagiellonian University of Kraków, Poland *University of Jamestown, in Jamestown, North Dakota, US *University of Johannesburg, South Africa *University of Jordan, the oldest in ...
; 2010
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 ...
(Hertzogprys) for prose


Works

Van Heerden has published two books of poetry, two books of short stories, a collection of cabaret songs, theoretical and academic work, and novels. His activity spans a wide range – a syndicated columnist in the major three Afrikaans dailies, published countrywide in South Africa, his own program on satellite television, and founder-editorship of one of the few South African internet startups.


Creative Work

* ''Matoli'' (1978) Youth novel. * ''Obiter Dictum'' (1983) Poetry. * ''My Kubaan'' (1983) Short stories. * ''Om te AWOL'' (1984) * ''Toorberg'' (English: ''Ancestral Voices'') (1986, 1989) * ''Die Laaste Kreef'' (1987) Poetry. * ''Liegfabriek'' (1988) Short stories. * ''Casspirs en Campari's'' (English: ''Casspirs and Camparis'') (1991, 1993) * ''Die Stoetmeester'' (English: ''Leap Year'') (1993, 1997) * ''Kikoejoe'' (English: ''Kikuyu'') (1996, 1998) * ''Lied van die Boeings'' (1998) Cabaret. * ''Die Swye van Mario Salviati'' (English: ''The Long Silence of Mario Salviati'') (2000, 2002) * ''In Stede van die Liefde'' (English: ''In Love's Place'') (2005, 2011) * ''Asbesmiddag'' (2007) * ''Mad Dog and Other Stories'' (2007) (Collected short stories from ''My Kubaan'' (1983) & ''Liegfabriek'' (1988)) * ''30 Nagte in Amsterdam'' (English: ''30 Nights in Amsterdam'') (2008, 2011) * ''Klimtol'' (2013) * ''Die Wêreld van Charlie Oeng'' (2017) * ''Die Biblioteek aan die Einde van die Wêreld'' (2019)


Other Publications


External links


Etienne van Heerden's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Van Heerden, Etienne South African writers 1954 births Afrikaner people South African people of Dutch descent Living people Afrikaans-language writers Hertzog Prize winners for prose International Writing Program alumni