Ernst Havemann, born and raised in Zululand, South Africa, Spoke Zulu as a first language. While retired in Nelson he began writing of his homeland for a critically acclaimed collection of fiction, Bloodsong and Other Stories of South Africa. A four-time CBC fiction contest prize-winner, he was compared to J.M. Coetzee and Nadime Gordimer. In 1992 he moved to Australia.
[BCBW 1992]
[BCBW 1992]
Articles: 2 Articles for this author
Bloodsong and Other Stories (Thomas Allen)
Info
Ernst Havemann, now living in Nelson, was born in Zululand, South Africa in 1918. The son of a privileged landowner, he grew up with Zulu children as his playmates. "The more I look back," he says, "the more distressing it is to realize how things have deteriorated under the apartheid system." Stories in his first collection, Bloodsong and Other Stories (Thomas Allen), are sad commentaries on the South Africa he chose to leave behind. With Afrikaans as his native tongue, Havemann credits his creative writing teachers at Nelson's defunct David Thompson University for molding his work since his arrival in Canada in 1978.
[Winter / BCBW 1989]
Bloodsong (Polestar $9.95) 1987
Info
Behind the violence of the evening -news about South Africa lingers an anguished threat of brutality for both blacks and whites. Born and raised in Zululand, Ernst Havemann has collected eleven illuminating stories about his former homeland in Bloodsong (Polestar $9.95). Now available in paperback, this collection by Havemann, a four-time CBC fiction prize winner, has drawn critical comparisons to the work of South African writers such as J .M. Coetzee and Nadime Gordimer.
[BCBW Autumn 1989]