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Marlene Van Niekerk

Biography

Marlene Van Niekerk

Marlene van Niekerk is an award-winning poet, novelist and short story writer. She was awarded South Africa’s high honour, the Order of Ikhamanga, in 2011 for her outstanding intellectual contribution to the literary arts and culture field through poetry, literature and philosophical works. She has received many accolades, including being a finalist for the sixth Man Booker International Prize 2015 and shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Literary Prize, the M-Net Literary Prize, the Booksellers’ Choice Award South Africa and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Marlene Van Niekerk

Books by Marlene Van Niekerk

Agaat
written by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated by Michiel Heyns - Fiction, Women's Fiction

In 1940s apartheid South Africa, Milla de Wet discovers a child abandoned in the fields of her family farm. Ignoring the warnings of friends and family, Milla brings the girl, Agaat, into her home. But the kindness is fleeting, as Milla makes Agaat her maidservant and, later, a nanny for her son. At turns cruel and tender, this relationship between a wealthy white woman and her Black maidservant is constantly fraught and shaped by a rigid social order. Decades later, Milla is confined to her bed with ALS and is quickly losing her ability to communicate. Her family has fallen apart, her country is on the brink of change, and all she has left are her memories --- and a reckoning with the only person who remains by her side: Agaat.