Lindsey Collen

Felicity Hand (Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona)

Ed. by Anna Hildegard Gagiano, University of Stellenbosch
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 1948
Activity 1990-ongoing

Places

Born in South Africa
Active in Mauritius

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Other

Revolutionary, Activist
Teacher/ Professor

Resources

Collen's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Thanks to the two Commonwealth Prizes that she has won for Best Book for the Africa region, in 1994 for

The Rape of Sita

and in 2005 for

Boy

, Lindsey Collen has become the best known Mauritian English language writer. Collen’s first novel,

There is a Tide

, was published in 1990 and since then she has written six more novels, five in English and one in Kreol, and is a regular contributor to several left-wing journals such as

New Internationalist

and

Red Pepper

Collen was born in Mqanduli near Umtata, Transkei, South Africa in 1948. Her father, a magistrate and an expert in native law, was posted in several different places in the Eastern Cape. As a child, she was fluent in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa, as she spoke English with her parents, Afrikaans with the neighbours, and Xhosa with

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2215 words

Citation: Hand, Felicity. "Lindsey Collen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 August 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12828, accessed 23 November 2024.]