Author: Etienne

Etienne van Heerden will be in conversation with Deborah Steinmair about Klimtol at the ABSA KKNK Festival in Oudtshoorn, 1 April 2014.

Read the article here.

Gareth Langdon reviews In Love’s Place in Aerodrome

“In Love’s Place is an incredibly satisfying and thoroughly local read.” – Gareth Langdon, Aerodrome

Read the article here.

Etienne van Heerden attended the December 2013 Living Legends meeting of old boys at Paul Roos Gimnasium, Stellenbosch and is seen here with, among others, Springbok rugby legends Jannie Engelbrecht and Hempies du Toit, artists/singers Porchie and Koos Kombuis, business leader Michael Jordaan, and newspaper editors Waldimar Pelser (of the Sunday newspaper Rapport) and Bun Booyens (of the Cape daily Die Burger). The popular TV magazine programme Kwêla (kykNET on DStv) flighted a documentary on this reunion during the week of 22 January 2014.

Etienne van Heerden visited Amsterdam, Netherlands, in January 2014. It was a working visit, for research purposes, and for discussions with his translators and his publisher. Here he is, in Amsterdam, with the Afrikaans poet Breyten Breytenbach (left) and (right) his research associate from Utrecht, Erik van den Bergh.

Etienne van Heerden, together with academics from Europe and South Africa, contributed to a festschrift in honour of University of Leiden’s Professor Eep Francken, who is retiring in 2014. Van Heerden was the first Resident Writer from Africa at the University of Leiden and at the time delivered the Albert Verwey lectures. The Festschrift is called Zo ver & zo dichtbij and was published by the Zuid-Afrikahuis. It contains the Dutch version of Van Heerden’s short story “Gifkaroo”.

With reference to Etienne van Heerden’s latest novel Klimtol (a klimtol is a yo-yo), LitNet’s Naomi Meyer interviewed South African Corli du Toit, the 2012 European Yo-Yo champion (Ladies Division). Klimtol will be published by Podium in Amsterdam in the summer of 2014. Read the interview here.

Etienne van Heerden’s poem on Nelson Mandela’s passing was published in Belgium and the Netherlands, in the leading dalies Trouw (Amsterdam) and De Standaard (Antwerp). Here is the first two pages of the Dutch version of four pages in Holland’s Trouw magazine insert on the Saturday before Mandela’s funeral. The translation was done by Van Heerden’s Dutch translators Martine Vosmaer and Karina van Santen. Click here for an enlargement of the first portion of the poem. Read the complete poem here.