Andre Brink, one of the most important voices coming out of South Africa during and since apartheid, told an audience at the Edinburgh international book festival on Saturday that he had more to write about now than ever before.
The 70-year-old, whose writing Nelson Mandela himself would press on new arrivals at Robben Island, was one of the highlights of this year's book festival.
Brink, twice nominated for the Booker prize, was the first writer in Afrikaans to have his work banned when, in 1974, Looking In Darkness, his treatment of a fateful sexual liaison between a black man and a white woman, proved too radical for Pretoria.
His latest novel, Praying Mantis, is published in the UK this month.
He started working on it more than 20 years ago and completed it, he said, as a 70th birthday present to himself.
"The story got its claws into me and kept hold. In some ways, I always knew it was never going to let go of me until I'd finally got it out of my system," he said.
"When I realized that 70 was looming I was daunted by the idea. The only other time I'd felt that way was when I was turning 30. It felt like the end of the world and I stayed in bed for three days because I simply couldn't imagine anything worthwhile or exciting happening after 30," he said.
He said the only thing that got him through the anxiety of reaching 70 was to write the book.
Since the end of apartheid, South African writers have frequently been asked what they have left to write about. Brink said he never felt obliged to write about the political situation, and said he felt there were now enormous possibilities for writers.
"The apartheid situation may have given a certain shape to the writing, but it wasn't the only reason people wrote. One writes for personal, private, internal reasons and, if those reasons drive you to writing, then an outside situation can change the direction in which you are going. But it can't change the fact that you feel compelled to write," he said.
Since the changeover more than a decade ago, he said he felt a new sense of inner freedom to "sit down and indulge" in writing "whatever he felt like writing."
He does, however, believe it is time for the discovery of a multitude of South African histories, many of which have never been written down, where the focus on the ordinary replaces the focus on illustrious men.
"For so long there has been one officially sanctioned version of South African history, devised by white men. It is very much a chauvinistic, patriarchal, white, Western version of the history. It is time to rediscover the real history," he said.
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