Brink, André (1935-2015), was one of South Africa’s best-known writers. He gained recognition for works that opposed South Africa’s former policy of racial segregation called apartheid. The South African government ended apartheid in the early 1990’s. Much of Brink’s fiction deals with the suppression of Black people by white South Africans. In his novels, Brink wrote about the historical roots of apartheid as well as the evils of the policy in South Africa. Brink wrote in both the Afrikaans language and in English. His novel Kennis van die Aand (1973) was the first Afrikaans novel to be banned in South Africa. He translated the work into English in 1974 as Looking on Darkness.
Brink’s many other novels include Rumours of Rain (1978), A Dry White Season (1979), States of Emergency (1988), An Act of Terror (1992), Imaginings of Sand (1996), Devil’s Valley (1999), and The Rights of Desire (2000). Brink also published several volumes of short stories, and wrote plays, children’s literature, travel books, and literary criticism. Several of his essays on South African literature, politics, and culture appeared in Mapmakers: Writing in a State of Siege (1983). He also translated books from English, French, and Spanish into Afrikaans. André Philippus Brink was born on May 29, 1935, in Vrede, South Africa. He died on Feb. 6, 2015.
