Achmat Dangor

Achmat Dangor was born in 1948, the year the Nationalist Party assumed power in South Africa and ushered in formal apartheid. He grew up in a mixed race township in Johannesburg, and until he started school, spoke only his mother tongue, Afrikaans and isiSotho. As a boy of eight he witnessed the forced removal of Africans, including his closest friends, from the township; a traumatic experience which influenced much of his later political activism and writing. He is the author of numerous works of fiction, stories, poetry and plays, including Bitter Fruit, which was listed for the Man Booker Prize 2004.

Dangor was highly active in Black student politics, and as a result of his membership of a literary group called Black Thoughts, was 'banned' by the state for five years in 1973. Writing in secret and hiding manuscripts with friends, he completed his first novel Waiting for Leila, innumerable short stories, poetry and plays, all of which were made available to South African audiences in the early eighties.

From 1973 to 1986 Dangor was employed by the South African subsidiary of one of a handful of American companies who stayed in the country on condition that they did not have to comply with racial segregation laws. He served in various managerial and executive positions, and in 1986 was asked to head up the newly formed Kagiso Trust, the largest black-led foundation in the country. He was also active in the internal wing of the African National Congress, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and helped found the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW).

In 1992 Dangor moved to New York's City College Harlem Campus as a visiting professor of literature and creative writing. He has published steadily since then, and also filled many crucial positions in South Africa, including being the head of Rural Development Forum, CEO of the Independent Development Trust and until recently, Executive Director of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.

Dangor is currently Director of Advocacy and Communications at the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS), and working on a new novel (working title 'The Book of Bertie, Ross and the Boy') set in Johannesburg and New York.

''(Bitter Fruit is )a haunting story of a family disintegrating, wonderfully authentic on its context, gender and generation, its progress like slow dancing' Barbara Trapido, Independent.

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