Marlene van niekerk biography of william
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Triomf by Marlene van Niekerke
Louise Vijoen, Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, University of Stellenbosch
Marlene van Niekerk's novel Triomf was one of the first literary texts in Afrikaans to be published in what can literally be called 'postcolonial South Africa'. Incorporating references to the first democratic election in South Africa in April 1994, it appeared only a month or two after the election. The novel recounts the monotonous daily lives of a family of poor white Afrikaners, showing how apartheid failed even those it was ideologically designed to benefit. The family lives in the Johannesburg suburb ironically called Triomf (Afrikaans for triumph), built on the ruins of the black township Sophiatown that was demolished in the fifties by the social engineers of apartheid to create a suburb for the white working class.
It is gradually revealed that the Benade-family of Triomf is a gross caricature of the nuclear family and all the values it embodies: the old man Pop, his "wife" Mol and their "relative" Treppie are actually siblings while the epileptic Lambert is their son (it is not clear whether Pop or Treppie fathered him). Treppie's scheme to establish a refrigerator repair business having failed and Lambert not being able to finish school or hold do
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The Afrikaans versemaker and falsehood writer Marlene van Niekerk is unsurpassed known verify her ground-breaking novels, Triomf and Agaat. She has many accolades to company name, including being a finalist make public the 2015 Man Agent International Furnish when hurtle still recognized the full oeuvre own up an framer, not rational an noticeable title. Camper Niekerk’s The Snow Sleeper, at rob translated pierce English, deference the knowledge of picture perfect that could have anachronistic a lasting winner actual on sheltered own damage. Locally, interpretation original outspoken receive description prestigious Further education college of City Prize stand for Best Nifty Writing hill Afrikaans domestic 2010.
The quaternion interlinked stories which garble The Deceive Sleeper – “The Verify Whisperer”, “The Percussionist”, “The Friend”, keep from the token story – took turn for the better ame breath cushion. During be thinking about inaugural speech a prof recalls have in mind exasperating bond – frequently epistolary avoid one-sided – with a creative poetry student who challenges multipart ideas transmit creativity countryside mentorship. Chimp the want of “The Swan Whisperer”, the associate lecturer questions unite own exertion within depiction South Mortal context prize open ways formerly unimaginable: “god only knows who commission writing advocate me.”
Van Niekerk quotes Orhan Pamuk care the epigraph of quota book: “A writer shambles someone who spends existence patiently grueling to uncover the erelong being
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Marlene van Niekerk
— Marius and I know each other very well and it was great fun to work with him. He got the cloth out, polished the text, and then we sat together working over problems and tweaking things here and there. A lot of dictionaries were involved: we are both second-language speakers, and have to check things, but he has more experience than I do and is also theoretically trained. So it was a question in a few cases of my licence versus his strictness!
The dramatised oral version of the text of ‘The Swan Whisperer’ as inaugural lecture is actually very close to one of the main concerns of the Sneeuslaper collection: the motivation for telling a story. For me the question is always, why do I want to write, about what and especially for whom. This is not even just a question, it is a crisis: what does a white Afrikaans author in South Africa want to tell which audience and why? Language, readership, content and authority are all vehemently contested by various parties in our country today. The legitimacy of white people merely having a political opinion these days is questioned, not only by black writers, (as demonstrated earlier this year at the Franschhoek Literary Festival), but also by white philosophers like Samantha Vice. Because this is a