Estate of K. Sello Duiker
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Biography: K. Sello Duiker was born in 1974 and grew up in Soweto and, later, East London in South Africa. After graduating from Rhodes University with majors in Journalism and Art History, he moved to Cape Town, and it was there that he found his writing voice. Sello always said that his mother, an insatiable reader, inspired his decision to become a writer.
His first novel, THIRTEEN CENTS, was awarded the 2001 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book, Africa Region. Published the same year, THE QUIET VIOLENCE OF DREAMS, was awarded the 2001 Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English Literature.
Tragically, Sello died at the age of 30 on 19 January 2005. His third and final book, THE HIDDEN STAR, a novel for children, was published posthumously by Penguin South Africa’s Umuzi imprint in 2006, and by Nigeria’s Cassava Republic.
Each exceptional on their own merit, Sello’s works have become considered landmark texts in the evolution of Post-Apartheid writing, Queer South African writing, and literature on mental health. Sello and his works are the subject of extensive, global academic attention. His work has been published in the US, Italy, France, Norway, Egypt, Holland, Germany and Nigeria, and all three of his novels have previously been optioned for film and television.
‘Duiker stands tall as a shining example of a writer with great vision. His voice still echoes from a distance, providing a guiding light on our troubled paths.’ – Siphiwo Mahala
‘One of the most promising post-apartheid writers, representing the frontier generation who attempt to transcend race in their exploration of South Africa… His passing robs South Africa of a talented, perceptive chronicler of its complex evolution.’ – The Guardian
‘A real tour de force… Duiker wrote about people like me, or himself.’ – Justice Malala
‘His work has left an indelible mark on literature.’ – Lutho Pasiya, IOL
THE QUIET VIOLENCE OF DREAMS
Literary fiction, 610 pages
Kwela , 2001/2014
Tshepo, a young student at Rhodes, has a difficult time keeping up with his own strange mind. He is absorbed in making sense of a traumatic past in a violent country and so, when he finds himself at the Valkenberg mental facility, it is perhaps not entirely due to “cannabis-induced psychosis”.
How is he to bring together the shattered pieces of his life? Discovering first his true sexuality, and then that sexuality is only a key to the greater realms of a hidden, mythical humanity, Tshepo can finally tap into the ancient powers that are his birthright.
THIRTEEN CENTS
Literary fiction, 194 pages
Kwela , 2000/2013; University of Ohio Press, 2013
Azure is twelve years old. An orphan, he lives on the streets of Cape Town, surviving as best he can between the gangsters, the pimps and the drug dealers, selling the only thing he can – himself.
Every city has a darker side and Cape Town – Azure’s city between the mountain and the sea – is no different; it is a brutal place for a boy trying to become a man, a place of dislocation, disillusionment and uncertainty.
But there is hope too, and moments of happiness, as Azure tries to escape the life he carved out for himself on the streets. THIRTEEN CENTS is an extraordinary and unsparing account of a coming of age in Cape Town. Reminiscent of some of the greatest child narrators in literature, Azure’s voice will stay with the reader long after this short novel is finished.
THE HIDDEN STAR
YA fiction, 234 pages
Umuzi, 2006; Cassava Republic, 2017
Eleven-year-old Nolitye’s granny used to say: if you mess with a woman, you mess with a stone. When Nolitye finds a magical stone on the dusty streets of Phola, her granny’s words take on a new meaning. Along with her two friends – the somewhat pampered Bheki, and Four Eyes, a reformed member of the Spoilers gang led by Rotten Nellie – Nolitye puts the powers of the stone to good use: for the first time the threesome can stand up to the Spoilers; Nolitye can save the life of Rex, the leader of a pack of talking township mutts; and dare to look scary MaMtonga with her living brown-and-green snake necklace in the eye.
But soon Nolitye finds out that the purplish-blue magic stone is but five stones needed to put right things that started to go wrong the day her father died in a mining accident when she was five years old. Or so she was told by her mother ...
By merging a cast of characters straight out of African myth folklore with everyday township life, K. Sello Duiker created a magical world and a truly wondrous quest, a timeless tale that will appeal to an ageless audience