Author: Etienne

Haai Karoo (Tafelberg Publishers) is an Afrikaans collection of short stories set in the Karoo. It will be launched at the 2012 Schreiner Literary Festival in Cradock (for further info, contact Lisa Antrobus Ker at lisa@tuishuise.co.za). The stories were previously published in earlier Van Heerden volumes and one of the texts, “Die gas in Rondawel Wilhelmina” was at the time published by the Dutch Anti-Apartheid organisation Kairos. “Haai” means “bleak”, “barren” and “inhospitable”. Most of these stories were published in French, Hebrew, Dutch and other languages.

Staying as guest of the Dutch Foundation for Literature on the Spui in Amsterdam for the month of February 2012, Van Heerden researched and worked on a new novel.
[Netherlands: Amsterdam, 02.2012]

Masters Class in Literary Translation

Etienne van Heerden will offer a Masters Class in Literary Translation at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands and his Dutch translator, Martine Vosmaer, will also contribute.

Lecture: 30 Nights in Amsterdam

Writers Unlimited: The Series, The Hague, Netherlands
This lecture: 30 Nights in Amsterdam
Lecture, Central Library, The Hague – 24 February 2012, 20h30 to 22h00

Writers Unlimited (formerly “Winternachten”) offers a series of conversations with authors: “Writers Unlimited: The Series” and in the 4th event Etienne van Heerden will discuss his latest novel with Jeroen van Kan (VPRO radio programme De Avonden) en the chief editor of ZAM Magazine, Bart Luirink.

Click here for more information.

New inter-review

• De Standaard: Jiven op de ruines van de apartheid
  [Belgium: Antwerp, 06.01.2012]

“De verbeelding en de energie van Van Heerden lijken even onbeperkt als de eindeloze Karoovlakte.”
– Ludo Teeuwen

New reviews

• Athenaeum Boekhandel: De sluizen van herinnering [Netherlands: Amsterdam, 05.01.2012]

“Van Heerden schepte bovendien voor de gekte van Zan een idioom dat haar een personage maakt dat zijn weerga in de moderne literatuur bijna niet kent. De oplopende stadia van haar ‘vervoering’ worden gespiegeld in haar steeds extatischer taal. Spreekt Zan in normale doen al kleurrijk, als zij een aanval krijgt gaat het hele taalregister open. De leestekens vallen weg, de associaties en verwijzingen buitelen over elkaar heen – u las het hierboven al. Een pluim voor Karina van Santen en Martine Vosmaer, de vertalers die haar (en dus Van Heerden) hebben kunnen bijbenen, hoed af voor deze beste roman van 2011.”
– Mark-Edward Schaap

• www.iedereenleest.be: 30 Nachten in Amsterdam
  [Belgium: Antwerp, 06.01.2012] 

“Het jaar 2011 sloot ik heel waardig af met een verbijsterend knap boek van Etienne van Heerden (1954), 30 Nachten in Amsterdam.”
– André Oyen

Etienne van Heerden took part in the Crossing Borders Festival (The Hague, Netherlands and Antwerp, Belgium), launching the Dutch translation of 30 Nights in Amsterdam.

“Etienne van Heerden’s new novel 30 Nights in Amsterdam is an incredibly rich novel, magnificently
written … 30 Nights in Amsterdam is a raging whirlwind of events, ideas, feelings and facts, captivating and transporting readers, leaving them breathless after the last page.”

– Sonja Dejong, Haarlems Dagblad [Netherlands: The Hague, 14.12.2011]

Supporting emerging writers: Terry Westby-Nunn’s The Sea of Wise Insects, the manuscript of which was completed under the supervision of Etienne van Heerden as part of UCT’s Creative Writing programme, has just been published by Jacana.

Nicole Jaekel Strauss has been awarded the Eugéne Marais Prize (a prize awarded for an early work) for her debut, Maal. Strauss also received the University of Johannesburg Prize for a Debut Work for this manuscript, completed under the supervision of Etienne van Heerden.

Smaller, more compact paperback edition of 30 Nights in Amsterdam, to be launched on October 1st, 2011. New cover design. [09.2011]

With Earl Lovelace and Lynda Gilfillan, “The Pen Free the Word dialogue”, Open Book Festival, Cape Town, September 2011. (Photo: Books LIVE) [09.2011]

Continue reading “Etienne van Heerden at the Cape Town Open Book Festival” →

Etienne van Heerden (middle) spoke at the second Olive Schreiner Karoo Writers’ Festival about the Karoo as his “landscape of the mind”. Here he is with a group at the Cradock Four Memorial. At the back, from left to right: Kaia van Heerden, Tim Wege, Darryl David (founder of the festival) and Rika Featherstonehaugh. In front, from left to right: June Walters, Miki Redelinghuys and her two children, Tumani Calata, Kiara David (daughter of Darryl), Menán van Heerden, Etienne van Heerden, Nomonde Calata (wife of activist Fort Calata, one of the Cradock Four), Julienne du Toit, Michael Antrobus, the author Michael Cawood Green and Christopher Nicholson (author of Who Killed the Cradock Four?) [07.2011]

• More photographs here.
• For photographs of the festival’s expedition to Schreiner’s grave on Buffelskop, click here.