(André P Brink presenting
his acceptance speech. Pic by Gareth Jacobs)
The Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) named author André P
Brink as the 2014 winner of the ACT Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.
Born in Vrede in 1935, Brink is the author of numerous
plays, works of non-fiction, and novels, including An Instant in the Wind, Rumours of Rain, A Dry White Season, Imaginings
of Sand, The Rights of Desire, The Other Side of Silence and most recently,
Philida, which was longlisted for the
Man Booker Prize in 2012. He became the first Afrikaans writer to have a novel,
Kennis van die Aand, banned by the
apartheid censors in 1973.
Since then, he writes simultaneously in Afrikaans and
English. He has also translated over 70 books from French, German, Spanish and
English into Afrikaans as well as from Afrikaans into English. He has won the
CNA Award three times, the Hertzog Prize twice, and was twice shortlisted for
the Booker Prize.
Brink is the recipient of the Prix Médicis Étranger, Premio
Mondello, Monismanien Human Rights Award, the Martin Luther King Memorial
Prize, and the Sunday Times Fiction Award, University of Johannesburg Prize,
and Commonwealth Literature Prize for Africa Region. In 2005, he was made
Officier of the Legion of Honour by the French government. His memoir A Fork in the Road was published in
2009. His work has been translated into 36 languages.
Brink is currently a Professor Emeritus of the University of
Cape Town.
The 2014 ACT Awards ceremony was sponsored by Nedbank Arts
Affinity, hosted by Sun International and presented in association with the
Dramatic, Artistic and Literary Rights Organisation (DALRO), Media24 Books,
ClassicFeel Magazine and is supported by the Distell Foundation and Business and
Arts South Africa (BASA).
Other Lifetime Achievement Award Winners include Richard
Cock for Music, Sam Nzima for Visual Art, Richard Loring for Theatre and Mandie
van der Spuy for Arts Advocacy. Each Lifetime Achievement Award winner received
R30,000 as a cash prize.
For more information about the Arts & Culture Trust
(ACT) visit http://www.act.org.za/
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