Denis Hirson
Agent: Isobel Dixon
Assistant: Finlay Charlesworth
Biography: South African writer, lecturer and one time actor, now living in Paris. Author of seven books, almost all of them at the frontier between prose and poetry and concerned with the memory of South Africa at the time of apartheid. These include The House Next Door to Africa (David Philip), as well as, from Jacana: We Walk Straight So You Better Get Out the Way, best-selling I Remember King Kong (the Boxer), the poetry collection Gardening In the Dark; the novel The Dancing and the Death on Lemon Street (short-listed for the Commonwealth Book Prize, 2012) and White Scars, a lyrical meditation on reading and its significance in our lives, runner-up for the South African Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-Fiction Prize in 2007. His latest book, MY THIRTY-MINUTE BAR MITZVAH, was published by Jacana in South African in 2022, with Pushkin Press to publish in the UK and US in 2024.
Added to this list is Hirson’s succinct history of South African literature from the 19th Century to 1994, World in One Country, original in that it covers prose, poetry and plays. This book is one more sign of Hirson’s wider involvement in the world of South African writing. Translator of Breyten Breytenbach’s poetry into English, concerned in one way or another with South African literary events and publications in French, he is also the editor of three anthologies, one of prose — The Heinemann Anthology of South African Short Stories — and two of poetry covering the period 1960-2013, The Lava of this Land (Northwestern University Press) and In the Heat of Shadows (Deep South).
Hirson’s ten conversations with William Kentridge, Footnotes for the Panther, came out with Fourth Wall in September 2017. His first book in French, Ma langue au chat, followed from Le Seuil one month later, describing the torture and delight of speaking and writing in French.
MY THIRTY MINUTE BAR MITZVAH
Memoir, 192 pages, Pushkin Press (WEL, 2024), Jacana Media (South Africa, 2022)
Witty and deeply poignant, MY THIRTY-MINUTE BAR MITZVAH is a breathtaking account of one man being confronted by his past and, ultimately, how his daughter proved to be the key in understanding his own father.
Recreating 1960s Johannesburg through his adolescent eyes, bestselling South African author Denis Hirson gradually reveals the details of his extraordinary 13th birthday as he explores the familial and political divisions in Apartheid South Africa that weighed on him and his developing consciousness of his Jewish heritage.
MY THIRTY-MINUTE BAR MITZVAH is a gem of a book about becoming a man. It’s also a valuable account of a forgotten time of white, Jewish activists, their families, their community, and most importantly, their children, who had to stumble through life in the aftermath of their commitment to racial justice.
THE DANCING AND THE DEATH ON LEMON STREET
Literary Fiction, 276 pages
Jacana Media (South Africa) - August 2011
Shortlisted for Commonwealth Book Prize 2012
The lives of people on Lemon Street, hidden in a leafy suburb of a 1960s South Africa wracked by uncertainty.
'An elegant bittersweet novel.' -- Hadrien Diez, Africabookclub.com
WHITE SCARS
Non-fiction essays, 196 pages Jacana Media (South Africa) - August 2006
A lyrical meditation on reading and its significance in our lives, focusing on four works that changed the author – books by Perec, Raymond Carver, and poet Breyten Breytenbach, as well as a book on the Sharpeville shooting.