Brink, André P(hilippus) (1935- )

South African novelist, dramatist, and critic. One of the most talented and prolific of modern Afrikaner writers, Brink has published in Afrikaans and in English and has received international recognition both for his opposition to apartheid and for his fiction. Brink's first works were largely apolitical, but the novel Kennis van die Aand/Looking on Darkness (1973), which treated the theme of interracial sexual relations, was banned in South Africa as was 'n Droë wit seisoen/A Dry White Season (1979; filmed 1989), a story about a white liberal investigating the death of a black political activist.

A lecturer in Afrikaans at Rhodes University 1961-91, Brink was a leading figure in the literary movement known as the Sestigers (‘people of the sixties’), a small group of Afrikaner writers who challenged their own tradition by exploring such subjects as religion and sex. Brink's later novels, which display his tendency for metafictional strategies, include On the Contrary (1993), Devil's Valley (1998), The Other Side of Silence (2002), and Before I Forget (2004). Since 1991 he has been professor of English literature at the University of Cape Town.