Author: Piling » Sat Feb 07, 2015 9:45 am
Celebrated South African Author, André P. Brink, has passed away at the age of 79.Renowned South African novelist and playwright, André Brink has died.
According to Books Live Brink passed away while returning from Belgium on Friday, where he had been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Belgian Francophone Université catholique de Louvain (UCL).
Brink was born on 29 May 1935, in Vrede, a small town in the Free State.
He was 79-years-old and a literature professor at the University of Cape Town at the time of his death.
Brink wrote in both English and Afrikaans, and played a key figure in the Afrikaans literary movement Die Sestigers in the 1960s - along with Ingrid Jonker and Breyten Breytenbach. The movement sought to use Afrikaans as a language to speak against the apartheid government.
In 1973 his novel Looking on Darkness was banned, this was followed by the banning of another Kennis van die Aand the following year.
His 1982 novel, A Dry White Season, was turned into a film in 1989 and starred actors such as Marlon Brando, Donald Sutherland, Zakes Mokae and Susan Sarandon.
The novel, set in South Africa in 1976 and focuses on the death in detention of a black activist, was also banned by the apartheid government.
http://mg.co.za/article/2015-02-07-andre-p-brink-dies