Marlene van Niekerk Wins Awards for Book Agaat

Marlene van Niekerk, author of the novel Triomf, has just won the 2007 Hertzog Prize for Prose and C.L. Engelbrecht Prize for literature for her novel that was released in 2004, Agaat.

Description of Agaat from Kalahari.net:

This novel deals with the relationship between a 67 year-old white woman in the terminal stages of ALS (motor neuron disease) and her coloured caretaker Agaat. The acute helplessness of the mute and completely paralysed patient makes extraordinary demands of her caretaker, who goes about her duties with a mixture of infinite tenderness, sadistic precision and a desperate and passionate undertow of anger about the past, as well as sadness of the anticipated loss of her "mistress". Through flashbacks and lyrical intermezzos, the history that leads up to this situation is revealed.

The Hertzog Prize or Hertzogprys is an annual award given to Afrikaans-language writers by the South African Academy for the Sciences and Arts (Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns), formerly the South African Academy for Language, Literature and Arts (Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Taal, Lettere en Kuns).

It is the most prestigious prize in Afrikaans literature.

The prize was first established in 1914 as part of the Tweede Taalbeweging ("Second Language Movement"); its first winner was Totius for his 1915 poetry collection Trekkerswee (Trekkers' Grief). The prize is awarded in the categories of poetry, prose, and drama.

Read the award announcement in Afrikaans here.