Brink, André

André Brink was a South-African author born in Vrede, the Orange Free State of South Africa. His father was a magistrate and a deeply religious man; his mother was a teacher. André Brink moved to Lydenburg in the north where he left college with top grades in 1952. He went on to read languages at the University of Potchefstroom in the province of Transvaal, then, as well as now, a base for Afrikaner nationalism. He was a right-wing extremist for a brief period in the 1950s – he came from a strongly nationalist Afrikaner family, his father was a firm believer of the benefits of apartheid and Brink's grandfather fought the English in the Boer War. Brink studied in Paris between 1959 and 1961 where he came into contact with Albert Camus who became his literary and moral guide, and he started to re-evaluate his previous opinions.