Zoe Wicomb

Monica Popescu (McGill University)

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 1987-ongoing

Places

Born in South Africa
Active in South Africa

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Wicomb's Works

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Zoë Wicomb was born in 1948 in Beeswater, a small settlement in the semi-arid area of Klein Namaqualand in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The daughter of a schoolteacher, she grew up in a family that spoke English in an Afrikaans-speaking Griqua community. In the racially segregated South African education system, knowledge of English allowed Wicomb access to better schooling than her peers in the village. She was sent to Cape Town for high school, after which she attended the University of the Western Cape, a higher education institution that the apartheid government had designated for coloured students. In 1970 she went to the United Kingdom for graduate studies at Reading University, after which she taught and started a writing career, eventually settling in Scotland.…

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3564 words

Citation: Popescu, Monica. "Zoe Wicomb". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 March 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12263, accessed 21 November 2024.]