South African writer Andre Brink dies aged 79

Andre Brink

Andre Brink

Andre Brink
Andre Brink

Celebrated South African author and outspoken critic of apartheid Andre Brink has died aged 79, local media said Saturday.

He reportedly died overnight Friday to Saturday on board a flight home from Belgium where he had received an honorary doctorate from Belgian Francophone Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL).

Talk Radio 702 quoted his ex-wife Alta Brink confirming he had died Friday evening.

Winner of several book awards and nominated three times for a Nobel prize, Brink was a literature professor at the University of Cape Town.

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Among the most widely-known of his works was his 1979 novel “A Dry White Season” which was made into a film starring Marlon Brando.

Born in May 1935 to a magistrate father and an English school teaching mother, he wrote in both English and Afrikaans.

Brink was a key member of the Die Sestigers literary movement of the 1960s that campaigned against the apartheid government using the Afrikaans language.

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