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  • Author Nominee:South Africa

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Beverley Naidoo
South Africa, Author

There is a tremendous need in our society - and indeed around the world - for literature that enables young people to cross boundaries.

- Beverley Naidoo

Born in Johannesburg in 1943, Beverley Naidoo attended university at Witwatersrand during the era of apartheid, and it was here that she became active in resistance to the prevailing system. She was jailed without trial for eight weeks for her stance on apartheid, and considers this to be part of her education because for black South Africans the whole country was a vast prison.

She left South Africa to study at the University of York in England, and it was only 26 years later that she was free to return to South Africa, following the fall of apartheid. Through her early experiences teaching marginalised teenagers in London, Naidoo came to understand the power that literature has to engage young people and break down barriers.

Her resolve to show what was happening to black children and their families in South Africa resulted in Journey to Jo'burg.This was followed by other books set in Africa, including Nigeria and Kenya in Mau Mau times. She also writes text for picturebooks and stories for younger readers as well as poetry and plays for stage and radio.

The outstanding characteristic in Naidoo's writing is the concerns and values she foregrounds in her work. She has the ability to view her characters' lives and dilemmas in an unsentimental and unfussy way, never evoking a false sympathy or overwhelming her readers with melodrama; she understands that their personalities and their situations give them the power and dignity required to earn ready identification with them. Often it is the very gentleness of her writing that lends credibility to the institutionalised cruelty she so often depicts.

Beverley Naidoo has been awarded honorary degrees and has won many awards for her work, including the UK's Carnegie Medal for The Other Side of Truth. She continues to engage with young people in workshops, and to work with teachers and parents to promote reading as a means of crossing boundaries, and she also conducts workshops for writers in African countries and in the Middle East.


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Selected bibliography

Journey to Jo'burg 1985 Longman/Penguin/HarperCollins
Letang's New Friend (illus Petra Röhr-Rouendaal) 1994 Longman
No Turning Back 1995 Viking
The Other Side of Truth 2000 Puffin
Out of Bounds 2001 Puffin [End Page 53]

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