K. Sello Duiker: 13 April 1974 - 19 January 2005

SOURCE: Bellagio Publishing Network Forum (Bellpubnet)

News of the untimely death of K. Sello Duiker on Wednesday, 19 January
2005, was received with deep sadness and shock by all who knew him.
Duiker was well loved and respected by everyone in the publishing world
who had the privilege of dealing with him. Despite a relatively small
output, he was greatly admired in literary and reading circles and had a
wide and loyal following, particularly among a younger generation of
readers. For many aspiring South African writers he served as a role
model of someone who fearlessly tackled unconventional themes and
explored new terrain; for an older generation of writers, for Zakes Mda
and Lewis Nkosi in particular, his work epitomised the best of post-1994
South African black writing. Because of his standing as a writer, he was
regularly invited to local and international writers' festivals and
offered a variety of residencies in the UK, Germany, Holland and
Switzerland, among others.

Duiker published two books and was busy on a third, scheduled for
publication later this year. For his debut novel, Thirteen Cents (David
Philip), which deals with street children in Cape Town, he was awarded
the 2001 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book, Africa region.
His second and more ambitious The Quiet Violence of Dreams (Kwela
Books), which challenged ingrained myths about maleness and black
sexuality, was awarded the 2002 Herman Charles Bosman Prize. This second
novel appeared in Dutch translation in 2004. Asked to comment on The
Quiet Violence, Duiker wrote to his Dutch publishers: "In a South
African context I was writing for people between 23 and 30 years of age
- people in my age group, because our generation is confronted with
different changes happening around us, and I wanted to communicate
something of the pressures and contradictions facing us. I think the
book is not politically correct although it is a sensitive account of
what I think is happening in South Africa right now. It's a young black
man's view of what is happening - it explores youth culture and what it
means to be young. It is also an overt exploration of current suburban
culture. It explores a lot of social geography, from the obscenely rich
to the poorest parts of Cape Town. Essentially it's a rite-of-passage
novel. It represents young Africans, not as exclusively black, but as
just as complex as anyone else, and [will make Dutch readers] realise
that young people in South Africa have to deal with the same challenges
that people in the North do. We in Africa are not all that different."

K. Sello Duiker, the eldest of three brothers, was born in Soweto on 13
April 1974. He spent a large part of his childhood in Soweto but also
received part of his schooling in England, where his father worked for
an international company. After school he spent a gap year working in
rural France. He obtained a BA degree in journalism from Rhodes
University and also briefly attended UCT. He worked as a copywriter in
advertising, a scriptwriter for television and the final position was as
commissioning editor at the SABC. He died at his own hand in
Johannesburg on 19 January 2005, at a time when he felt his
mood-stabilising medication was taking too great a toll on his artistic
creativity and joie de vivre.

"I'm sure I will be forgiven for admitting in public that Sello was my
most favourite writer. Fun-loving and enormously talented and
perceptive, he was blessed with equal measures of gentleness and
kind-heartedness on the one hand, and unflinching honesty and a fearless
pursuit of what he saw as essential human experience on the other. If he
had one shortcoming, it was an inability to protect himself from life,"
said Annari van der Merwe, his publisher and friend of long standing.

Duiker's family has asked that the media respects their wish for privacy
at this time of bereavement.

Issued by Annari van der Merwe on behalf of the Duiker family

Bellagio Publishing Network
PO Box 1369
Oxford OX4 4ZR
[email protected]
www.bellagiopublishingnetwork.org

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Bellagio Publishing Network Forum (Bellpubnet)