Anti-apartheid writer Andre Brink dies

Andre Brink has been described as brave and hugely influential
South African writer Andre Brink, one of the most outspoken critics of the apartheid regime, has died.

Brink, 79, died on Friday night on board a flight to Cape Town after visiting Belgium where he had received an honorary doctorate, local media say.

Brink wrote both in Afrikaans as well as English. His novels have been translated in more than 30 languages.

Some of his books, including A Dry White Season which was turned into a film, were banned in South Africa.

Other novels include Looking on Darkness and Philida for which he was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2012.

Andre Brink was a literature professor at the University of Cape Town at the time of his death.



Keane tribute
In the 1960s, he was a key figure in the Afrikaans literary movement Die Sestigers, the movement that used Afrikaans to speak against the apartheid movement.

In the movement's eponymous magazine, Brink wrote: "If I speak of my people then I mean: every person black, coloured or white, who shares my country and my loyalty towards my country."
Reporters correspondent Fergal Keane described Brink as a "brave" novelist, whose books had had "a huge impact on me when I began reporting SA in the 1980s and ever since".