Carlo Petersen
AFRICAN authors’ authenticity in producing bold, exuberant and profound writing has seen four of them – including one from South Africa – feature on a list of 10 finalists for this year’s Man Booker International Prize.
The prestigious accolade for writers, which has been described as “the most prized literary award of all”, is given bi-annually and this year our very own Marlene van Niekerk has made the cut.
Van Niekerk, 60, who was born and raised at Tygerhoek Farm, near Caledon, is famed for her novels Triomf and Agaat.
The other authors, who stand a chance of winning £60 000, include César Aira from Argentina; Hoda Barakat from Lebanon; Maryse Condé from Guadeloupe; Mia Couto from Mozambique; Amitav Ghosh from India; Fanny Howe from the US; Ibrahim al-Koni from Libya; László Krasznahorkai from Hungary; and Alain Mabanckou from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A panel of five highly acclaimed writers and literary experts gathered at UCT’s Otto Beit building to announce the list of finalists yesterday.
The panel of judges,which include chairwoman Marina Warner, Nadeem Aslam, Elleke Boehmer, Edwin Frank and Wen-chin Ouyang, described Van Niekerk’s work as ambitious, uncompromising and irrefutable.
“She is the author of two immense masterpieces which chart in evocative, sometimes disturbing detail the aches and aggravations of political transition in South Africa for those who saw themselves as on the losing side, in particular impoverished Afrikaners.
“The bold experimentalism of her Afrikaans takes the reader deep inside the contortions of the apartheid psyche, and asks whether some historical hurts and hatreds can ever be entirely erased.”
The judges’ citation for Mozambican author Couto read: “Mia Couto’s stories of civilisation and barbarity are told through a language that is precise and profound; he weaves together the living tradition of legend, poetry and song. His pages are studded with startling images.
“In the sands of Tandissico the sea ‘opens out like a blue world’.”
The winner will be named in London on May 19.