Marlene van Niekerk


Marlene van Niekerk is a South African academic, novelist and poet who is best known internationally for her novels Triomf and Agaat. Her graphic and controversial descriptions of a poor Afrikaner family in Johannesburg in Triomf brought her to the forefront of a post-apartheid society still struggling to come to terms with all the changes in South Africa. This novel was made into an award-winning film, likewise called Triomf, in 2008, directed by Michael Raeburn.
She explains that the portraying the separation of the sexes in her work is the result of being "outside the main arena" as an Afrikaner lesbian.

Biography

Marlene van Niekerk was born on 10 November 1954 on the farm Tygerhoek near Caledon in the Western Cape, South Africa. She attended school in Riviersonderend and Stellenbosch, where she matriculated from Hoërskool Bloemhof.
She studied languages and philosophy at Stellenbosch University and obtained an MA with the thesis: "Die Aard en Belang van die Literêre Vormgewing in 'Also sprach Zarathustra'" in 1978.
While at university, she wrote three plays for amateur theatre. In 1979 she moved to Germany to join theatres in Stuttgart and Mainz to study directing. From 1980 to 1985, she continued her study of philosophy in the Netherlands and obtained a Dutch doctorandus with a thesis on the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Paul Ricoeur: "Taal en Mythe: Een Structuralistische en Een Hermeneutische Benadering" from the University of Amsterdam.
Back in South Africa, she lectured in philosophy at the University of Zululand, and later at Unisa. During the 1990s, she was a lecturer in Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Since 2000, Marlene van Niekerk is a professor in the Department of Afrikaans and Dutch, Stellenbosch University, where she teaches creative writing.

Awards and Recognition