Michiel Heyns

Michiel Heyns grew up all over South Africa – Thaba Nchu, Kimberley, Grahamstown, Cape Town - and was educated at the Universities of Stellenbosch and Cambridge. For much of his adult life he was an academic, lecturing in English at the University of Stellenbosch, but after publication of his first novel, The Children’s Day, he took to writing full-time, publishing The Reluctant Passenger in 2003 and The Typewriter’s Tale in 2005. His latest novel, Bodies Politic, was recently published by Jonathan Ball, and won the 2009 Herman CharlesBosman Award for English Fiction. In 2006 he translated two works by Marlene van Niekerk, Agaat and Memorandum. Agaat was awarded the Sunday Times Fiction Prize for 2006;  published as The Way of the Women in the UK in November 2007, it was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Michiel Heyns won the English Academy's Sol Plaatje Award for Translating (2008) as well as the South African Translators' Institute Award for a Literary Translation for his translation of Agaat.  He has also translated Equatoria by Tom Dreyer, published by Aflame Books (UK, 2008). His translation of Etienne van Heerden's 30 Nights in Amsterdm will be published late in 2010. He reviews regularly for the Sunday Independent, for which he was awarded the English Academy's Pringle Prize for Reviewing for 2006