Acclaimed anti-apartheid author André Brink dies aged 79

Celebrated South African author and outspoken critic of apartheid André Brink has died aged 79, local media said Saturday. He reportedly died overnight Friday on board a flight home from Belgium where he had received an honorary doctorate from Belgian Francophone Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL). His novel, A Dry White Season, was turned into a film in 1989 and starred actors such as Marlon Brando, Donald Sutherland, Zakes Mokae and Susan Sarandon.

Sometimes, in one of his more exuberant or desperate moods, Pa would go out in the veld and sprinkle brandy on the daisies to make them drunk so that they wouldn’t feel the pain of shrivelling up and dying.

André Brink, The Rights of Desire

Brink wrote in both English and Afrikaans, and was a key figure in the Afrikaans literary movement Die Sestigers in the 1960s – along with Ingrid Jonker and Breyten Breytenbach. The movement sought to use Afrikaans as a language to speak against the apartheid government. In 1973 his novel Looking on Darkness was banned, this was followed by the banning of another book Kennis van die Aand the following year.

Arts Andre Brink