WRITER

André Brink

1935 - 2015

Photo of André Brink

Icon of person André Brink

André Philippus Brink (29 May 1935 – 6 February 2015) was a South African novelist, essayist and poet. He wrote in both Afrikaans and English and taught English at the University of Cape Town.In the 1960s Brink, Ingrid Jonker, Etienne Leroux and Breyten Breytenbach were key figures in the significant Afrikaans dissident intellectual and literary movement known as Die Sestigers ("The Sixty-ers"). These writers sought to expose the Afrikaner people to world literature, to use the Afrikaans language to speak out against the extreme Afrikaner nationalist and white supremacist National Party-controlled government, and also to introduce literary modernism, postmodernist literature, magic realism and other global trends into Afrikaans literature. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of André Brink has received more than 210,118 page views. His biography is available in 36 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 35 in 2019). André Brink is the 1,944th most popular writer (down from 1,776th in 2019), the 36th most popular biography from South Africa (down from 35th in 2019) and the 5th most popular South African Writer.

Memorability Metrics

  • 210k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 56.40

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 36

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 6.19

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.02

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Cape of storms
Fiction, Adamastor (Legendary character), South Africa in fiction
He is the chieftain leader of the Khoikhoi, a nomadic people derogatorily called “Hottentot”’ by European colonists. She is a white woman left behind by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s crew when they rounded Africa’s southern tip in 1498. Their romance is the core of this powerful novella.According to Portuguese myth, Zeus turned Adamastor into the rocky cape of the South African peninsula. Andre Brink’s parable suggests that white Europeans have punished native Africans in the same way. With this novel, Brink takes us to the heart of the relationships that define South Africa’s modern history.“Peter Carey, Garcia Marquez, Solzhenitsyn: Andre Brink must be considered with that class of writer.” —Guardian
1993
A chain of voices
Fiction, History, Slaves
On a farm near the Cape Colony in the early nineteenth century, a slave rebellion kills three and leaves eleven others condemned to death. The rebellion’s leader, Galant, was raised alongside the boys who would become his masters. His first victim, Nicholas van der Merwe, might have been his brother.As the many layers of Andre Brink’s novel unfold, it becomes clear that the violent uprising is as much a culmination of family tensions as it is an outcry against the oppression of slavery.Spanning three generations and narrated in the voices of both the living and the dead, A Chain of Voices is reminiscent of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!; it is a beautiful and haunting illustration of racism’s plague on South Africa.
1982
The other side of silence
Women colonists, Fiction, Young women
2002
An instant in the wind
History, Fiction
1976
A dry white season
Fiction, Death, Teenagers
1979
A Dry White Season
Fiction in English, Death, Teenagers
1979

Page views of André Brinks by language

Over the past year André Brink has had the most page views in the with 24,758 views, followed by French (10,525), and Afrikaans (4,338). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Armenian (53.45%), Breton (51.01%), and Bulgarian (49.00%)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, André Brink ranks 1,944 out of 7,302. Before him are Otto IV, Margrave of Brandenburg-Stendal, José Luis de Vilallonga, 9th Marquess of Castellbell, Vazha-Pshavela, Avitus of Vienne, Hirokazu Kanazawa, and Nicholas Sparks. After him are Constantine of Preslav, Bernard Palissy, Jón Arason, Eugenio Barba, Jane Jacobs, and Margarete Buber-Neumann.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1935, André Brink ranks 119. Before him are Luboš Kohoutek, Thomas Keneally, Azzedine Alaïa, Richard Kuklinski, Bruno Sammartino, and Jan Saudek. After him are Jerry Orbach, Jerry Fodor, Chaim Topol, Tsutomu Hata, Mohamed Choukri, and Sergei Khrushchev. Among people deceased in 2015, André Brink ranks 105. Before him are Omar Karami, Eileen Essell, Saud bin Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Franzl Lang, Jaakko Hintikka, and Halldór Ásgrímsson. After him are Adrian Frutiger, Hyon Yong-chol, Guy Ligier, Chea Sim, John Guillermin, and Kirk Kerkorian.

Others Born in 1935

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Others Deceased in 2015

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

In South Africa

Among people born in South Africa, André Brink ranks 36 out of 454. Before him are Jan Smuts (1870), Abba Eban (1915), Kgalema Motlanthe (1949), Michael Levitt (1947), Peter Abrahams (1919), and Arnold Vosloo (1962). After him are Cetshwayo kaMpande (1826), Kevin Carter (1960), Andries Pretorius (1798), Rory Byrne (1944), Louis Botha (1862), and C. R. Swart (1894).

Others born in South Africa

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous

Among WRITERS In South Africa

Among writers born in South Africa, André Brink ranks 5. Before him are J. R. R. Tolkien (1892), J. M. Coetzee (1940), Nadine Gordimer (1923), and Peter Abrahams (1919). After him are Ronald Harwood (1934), Laurence Oliphant (1829), Laurens van der Post (1906), Breyten Breytenbach (1939), Deon Meyer (1958), Ingrid Jonker (1933), and Alan Paton (1903).

South African born Writers

Go to all Rankings
Load previousLoad previous