BODIES POLITIC, a novel
312 pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2008
Winner of the 2009 Herman Charles Bosman Award for English Fiction.
Against the background of the stuggle for the vote for women and the First World War, Michiel Heyns examines, in fictionalised form, the private lives of three suffragettes: Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Women's Movement, her daughter Sylvia, and Helen, a woman loved by Emmeline's son Harry.
Michiel Heyns's novels include A Poor Season for Whales, Lost Ground (Herman Charles Bosman Award for English Fiction and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize 2012) and A Sportful Malice (Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English Fiction 2015). He also won the 2008 English Academy's Sol Plaatje Award for Translating as well as the South African Translators' Institute Award for a Literary Translation for his translation of Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat. He reviewed regularly for the Sunday Independent, for which he was awarded the English Academy's Pringle Prize for Reviewing for 2006 and again for 2010. He was Professor of English at the University of Stellenbosch.