Antjie Krog

Antjie Krog is a poet, writer, journalist and Professor at the University of the Western Cape. She published twelve volumes of poetry in Afrikaans, two volumes in English, and 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. Her work has been translated into English, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish, Serbian and Arabic. 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 the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom into Afrikaans.

Krog had been awarded most of the prestigious awards for poetry, non-fiction, journalism and translation available in South Africa, as well as the Stockholm Award from the Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture for the year 2000, as well as the Open Society Prize from the Central European University (previous winners were Jürgen Habermas and Vaclav Havel).