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Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk - English
URL: http://www.postcolonialweb.org/sa/viljoen/8.html

Marlene van Niekerk's novel Triomf was one of the first literary texts in Afrikaans to be published in what can literally be called 'postcolonial South Africa'. Incorporating references to the first democratic election in South Africa in April 1994, it appeared only a month or two after the election. The novel recounts the monotonous daily lives of a family of poor white Afrikaners, showing how apartheid failed even those it was ideologically designed to benefit. The family lives in the Johannesburg suburb ironically called Triomf (Afrikaans for triumph), built on the ruins of the black township Sophiatown that was demolished in the fifties by the social engineers of apartheid to create a suburb for the white working class.

[ eng ]

Marlene van Niekerk - English
URL: http://www.stellenboschwriters.com/vniekerkm.html

Poet and author of satirical short stories and a novel

[ eng ]