Category: Latest

With interviewer Coenie de Villiers on the Kwêla TV programme, discussing LitNet Akademies, the 2nd Karoo Development Conference, hydraulic fracking and Haai Karoo.

“Words Without Borders” are carrying “Poison Karoo” (translated from the original Afrikaans into English by Isobel Dixon) in their current issue:

“This month we explore the role of oil in the international landscape. Oil transforms nations, links disparate political and social ideologies, breeds conflict, and drives governmental and corporate policy; our writers show how this force, both blessing and curse, shapes lives and literature around the world. We begin with an essay by political scientist Michael L. Ross connecting oil wealth and national development. Russian Booker nominee and award-winning short-story writer Alexander Snegiryov presents the (show) business of oil in Russia.

“In two graphic pieces, Lebanon’s Mazen Kerbaj mourns what’s left of his pillaged country, and Italy’s Davide Reviati grows up in the shadow of Ravenna’s ominous petrochemical plant. Translator Peter Theroux shows how Abdelrahman Munif’s great Cities of Salt runs on oil. Afrikaans star Etienne van Heerden’s solitary South African experiences hydrofracking firsthand, while science fiction writer Andreas Eschbach’s stolid loner taps a sixth sense for oil. In two tales of oil workers, Argentina’s María Sonia Cristoff and Germany’s Anja Kampmann explore solitude, madness, and other occupational hazards. And poet Stephen E. Kekeghe protests the draining of Nigeria.”

Pieter-Dirk Uys visited Etienne van Heerden’s MA Creative Writing class at UCT, offering a seminar on the Writer as Satirist. Other participants in 2012’s second semester include Michiel Heyns (“The Writer as Translator”), Lauren Beukes (“The Writer as Futurist”), Deon Meyer (“The Writer as Detective”) and Leon de Kock (“The Writer as would-be Lover”). Apart from the seminars with invited writers, Van Heerden workshops flash fiction/sudden fiction texts and short stories written by the students (and inspired by the presentations by the visiting writers). In addition, he offers lectures on narrative strategies.

At the Haai Karoo launch in Stellenbosch (at Protea Boekehuis) Tim Huisamen conducted the interview with Etienne van Heerden.

Old friend Obie Oberholzer visited Market Street, Cradock, and came up with this satirical self-portrait in typical Oberholzer style.

Etienne van Heerden with fellow novelist André Brink at the launch of Van Heerden’s short story collection Haai Karoo at the Open Book Festival, Fugard Theatre, Cape Town (photo: Chrizane van Zyl).

Etienne van Heerden signing a copy of Haai Karoo for ex-student René Penderis (photo: Chrizane van Zyl).

“Poison Karoo” is a chapter from Etienne van Heerden’s novel about a yo-yo champion, to be published in March 2013 by Tafelberg Publishers.

The English translation of Gifkaroo is by Isobel Dixon, whose poems about the Karoo are included in her collections The Tempest Prognosticator (2011), A Fold in the Map (2007) and Weather Eye (2001), which was awarded the Olive Schreiner Prize in 2004. She grew up in Graaff-Reinet.

Poison Karoo is a work of fiction, written as if commercial hydraulic fracking has already begun in the Karoo.

• Elbie Adendorff: ’n Klein lewe allesbehalwe klein

(’n Klein lewe was completed under the supervision of Etienne van Heerden as part of UCT’s Creative Writing programme).