The release of this new edition of Marlene van Niekerk’s classic book is timed to coincide (roughly) with the film’s SA screenings.
“South Africa as you’ve never seen it: a tale of incest and white trash. Funny, feisty, ferociously clever. A dazzling flight of the imagination that is anarchic and at the same time, deadly serious. Read it.”
– Gillian Slovo
Marlene van Niekerk’s multi-award winning novel, Triomf, tells the story of the four residents of 127 Martha Street in the then ‘poor white’ suburb of Triomf, built on the ruins of old Sophiatown, once the vibrant and notorious centre of black city life in Johannesburg.
This story of a highly dysfunctional Afrikaans family of the time illustrates the fear and trepidation that was felt about the political changes sweeping the land and their earnest and sometimes amusing attempts to make sense of life even under the most abject of circumstances. Triomf relentlessly probes Afrikaner history and politics, revealing the bizarre and tragic effect that apartheid had on the white underclass who should have been its main beneficiaries.
“An astonishing departure for Afrikaans literature … this is an extraordinary novel and a milestone for South African literature. Those who thought, as I did, that white writing would run out of road in post-apartheid South Africa could not have been more wrong.”
– Justin Cartwright
“The tenderness of the writing, eliciting an unexpected compassion in the reader, is remarkable in a first-time novelist. It is not hard to poke fun at Afrikaners: to reveal their underlying humanity is a much more impressive accomplishment.”
– David Robson
Triomf is the winner of the CNA Literary Award and the M-Net Prize in South Africa. It also won the prestigious Noma Award for best book in Africa. The English edition is translated by Leon de Kock.
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