

Antjie Krog is an Afrikaans poet, writer, and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Western Cape. She has published thirteen volumes of poetry in Afrikaans, four of which have been compiled with English translations: Down to My Last Skin (2000), Body Bereft (2006), Synapse (2014), and Pillage (2022). She has also published three non-fiction books: Country of My Skull (1998), on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; A Change of Tongue (2004), about the transformation in South Africa after ten years; and Begging to Be Black (2009), about learning to live within a black majority. Krog has also co-authored an academic book, There was this Goat (2009), with two colleagues, Prof. Kopano Ratele and Nosisi Mpolweni, investigating the Truth Commission testimony of Mrs. Notrose Nobomvu Konile. A book of essays, Conditional Tense – Memory and Vocabulary After the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was published in 2013 as part of Seagull Books’ African List.
‘Country of my Skull’ and ‘A Change of Tongue’ have been nominated by South African librarians (LIASA) as two of the ten most important books written in ten years of democracy. She was also asked to translate Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, ‘Long Walk to Freedom,’ into Afrikaans.
Krog has been awarded most of the prestigious awards for poetry, non-fiction, journalism, and translation available in Afrikaans and English in South Africa. Internationally, she has received the Stockholm Prize from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture for the year 2000, the Open Society Prize from Central European University, and the Dutch Gouden Ganzenveer (2018), as well as an Honorary Doctorate from the Tavistock Clinic of the University of East London, UK. Her work has been translated into English, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish, Serbian, Arabic, and Chinese.
South Africa