One journalist, one crime writer and one debutant. Three promising South African authors will attend the Göteborg Book Fair in September 2010 - Deon Meyer, Mark Gewisser and Kopano Matlwa.
Deon Meyer is considered to be one of South Africa's leading authors and his six books have so far been translated in 20 different languages. Meyer started his career as a news paper journalist and he also worked with advertising and webbing before he started to write novels in Afrikaans in magazines and newspapers. His first detective-story was published in 1999.
Mark Gewisser is one of South Africa's leading journalists, and his latest piece A legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream" won Sunday Times Alan Paton Prize and NB Books Recht Malan Prize 2008. The book has gained a lot of attention and is seen as one of the most important South African specialist literature since the abolishment of the apartheid system. Mar Gewisser currently works at the university in Pretoria where he is a journalist teacher.
The physician Kopano Matlwa is an upcoming writer within the South African literature who is also coming to the Göteborg Book Fair this autumn. Her first piece Coconut was published in 2006, and was awarded with the European Union Literary Award in 2007. At the time, Matlwa was only 21 years old. She is educated as a physician at the university in Cape Town and is one of the founders of a voluntary organization that teaches patients in health issues in waiting rooms. Furthermore, she has been awarded by Mail&Guardian to one of "100 young South Africans you have to eat lunch with". | 