Marlene van Niekerk

South African poet, writer, and academic

Marlene van Niekerk (born 10 November 1954) is a South African poet, writer, and academic. She is best known for her novels, the satirical tragicomedy Triomf (1994) and the Hertzog winning Agaat (2004), which explore themes including the family, the change in power dynamics occasioned by the end of Apartheid, and inequalities of race, gender, and class. Van Niekerk is also an award winning poet. She writes in her native tongue, Afrikaans, and teaches at Stellenbosch University.

Marlene van Niekerk was born on 10 November 1954 on Tygerhoek farm near Caledon in the Western Cape of South Africa. She attended school in Riviersonderend and Stellenbosch, matriculating from Hoërskool Bloemhof. She studied languages and philosophy at Stellenbosch University. She published her literary debut while still a student – Sprokkelster (1977), a volume of poetry, won the Eugène Marais Prize and the Ingrid Jonker Prize. In 1978, she obtained a Master's degree, with a thesis titled "Die aard en belang van die literêre vormgewing in 'Also sprach Zarathustra'" ("The nature and significance of the literary design in 'Also sprach Zarathustra'"). In 1985, she obtained a Dutch doctorandus in philosophy from the University of Amsterdam. Her thesis was on the works of Claude Lévi Strauss and Paul Ricoeur, and was titled "Taal en mythe: een structuralistische en een hermeneutische benadering" ("Language and myth: a structuralist and a hermeneutic approach"). It divided audiences (and provoked several angry letters to the editor in Afrikaans newspapers), with one favourable review calling it "a baroque assault of forms, idioms, wordplay, lyricism, operatic tragic comic interludes, Brechtian theatrical alienation, and ripping symbolic violence." Among other themes, the novel explores Apartheid's class dimensions and the status of poor whites in South Africa, who, van Niekerk suggests, were ostensibly the beneficiaries of Apartheid, but in fact became downtrodden and disfigured by its ideology. It received generally, but not exclusively, positive reviews, both in South Africa and abroad. The New York Times called it South Africa's "only world class tragicomic novel, the kind of book that stabs at your heart while it has you rolling on the floor." Triomf was dramatised in a 2008 film, directed by Michael Raeburn.