South African poet and scholar Breyten Breytenbach has passed away.

South African poet, scholar, and activist Breyten Breytenbach died in Paris, France on Monday, November 25, 2024.

Breyten Breytenbach was born on September 16, 1939, in Bonnievale, South Africa attended secondary school in the Western Cape, and studied fine arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. Breytenbach was a political dissenter against the ruling National Party and its white supremacist policy of apartheid in the early 1960s. He left South Africa for Paris, France, where he married a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, Yolande, as a result of which he was not allowed to return. After travelling to South Africa in 1975 on a false passport, he was arrested and pleaded guilty to entering South Africa to start an organisation called Atlas or Okhela, which was intended to be a branch of the African National Congress (ANC) for white people. He was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for high treason and was released in 1982 after he served seven years as a result of international protests. After obtaining French citizenship, He returned to Paris for the rest of his life.

Breytenbach wrote over fifty books of poetry, novels, plays, and essays, mostly in Afrikaans many translated into multiple languages. Some of his titles in English were Catastrophes (1964), To Fly (1971), The Tree Behind the Moon (1974), The Anthill Bloats (1980), A Season in Paradise (1980), Mouroir: Mirror Notes of a Novel (1983), Mirror Death (1984), End Papers (1985), The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1985), Memory of Snow and of Dust (1987), Book. Part One (1987), All One Horse. Fiction and Images (1989), Sweet Heart (1991), Return to Paradise. An African journal (1992), The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution (1996), Dog Heart. A travel memoir (1998), Word Work (1999), A veil of footsteps (2008), All One Horse (2008), Mouroir: Mirror Notes of a Novel (2008), Intimate Stranger (2009), and Notes From The Middle World: Essays (2009).

He won numerous awards for his work like the University of Johannesburg Prize for Creative Writing, the Alan Paton Award, and an International Publishers Prize. He was also awarded Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur and Commandeur des Arts et Lettres by his adopted home of France.

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