Zoë Wicomb, the pioneering South African author and academic, has died in her home of Glasgow, Scotland. She was 77 years old.

Born in the then Cape Province, Wicomb was raised in Namaqualand, then attended the University of the Western Cape (UWC).

Wicomb’s first book, You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987) earned her recognition both in South Africa and abroad. A partly autobiographical collection of interrelated short stories, the book offers a complex and deeply evocative examination of Coloured life in apartheid-era South Africa.

The book prompted Toni Morrison, the Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, to describe Wicomb as ‘an extraordinary writer … her talent glitters’ and the book as ‘seductive, brilliant, and precious’.

Wicomb’s second work, a novel titled David’s Story (2000), is set towards the end of apartheid and explores the underground liberation movement. It won the 2001 M-Net Prize, with JM Coetzee calling it ‘a tremendous achievement and a huge step in the remaking of the South Africa novel’:

For years we have been waiting to see what the literature of post-apartheid South Africa will look like. Now Zoe Wicomb delivers the goods. Witty in tone, sophisticated in technique, eclectic in language, beholden to no one in its politics …

This was followed by the novel Playing in the Light (2006) and a second collection of short stories, The One That Got Away (2008). Her third novel, October (2015) is an intense look at exile and homecoming. Her latest work, Still Life, was published in 2020, and was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best historical novels of the year.

Wicomb was also a prolific writer of literary and cultural criticism, and a selection of this work was collected in Race, Nation, Translation: South African Essays, 1990–2013, edited by Andrew van der Vlies, in 2018.

• Read: ‘Intersectionality seems so blindingly obvious a notion’—Zoë Wicomb in conversation with Andrew van der Vlies, from their new book Race, Nation, Translation

Wicomb was particular about her publishers. Internationally, she worked with independent non-profits such as The Feminist Press and The New Press. Locally, she played a key role in the post-apartheid publishing project, championed by Annari van der Merwe and supported by Stephen Johnson at Random House, that aimed to foreground South African voices and narratives. Her work accordingly appeared under the seminal South African imprints Kwela and Umuzi.

Writing to The JRB, Annari van der Merwe offered the following remarks about Wicomb, in memoriam:

Zoë Wicomb has no comparison. She was a marvellous writer to work with—unassuming about her writing, yet resolute. And she was a joy to be around, with a wit as sharp as her acute mind, and a natural playfulness that concealed her earnest, reflective nature.

If you ever experienced one of her masterful public lectures or readings, you would never have suspected how tense and unsure of herself she was beforehand.

Zoë was fair and kind and honest—characteristics that have become vanishingly rare. As she was, so vanishingly rare.

Wicomb moved to England in 1970, returning to South Africa in 1990 to teach at UWC. In 1994 she moved to Glasgow, Scotland to take up the position of Professor of English at the University of Strathclyde. She retired in 2009.

In 2013, Wicomb was awarded the prestigious Windham–Campbell Prize for her fiction, with the prize citation reading:

Zoë Wicomb’s subtle, lively language and beautifully crafted narratives explore the complex entanglements of home, and the continuing challenges of being in the world.

UWC has issued a statement about her passing:

Professor Robert Balfour, UWC’s Vice-Chancellor, expressed his profound sadness at the news of her passing: ‘I had the opportunity to meet with Zoe who visited for a Time of the Writer Festival in the early 2000s, and then kept in touch by visiting her and her partner in Glasgow. Her lively interest in South Africa and her deep concern with equality, inclusion and diversity, featured with such nuance, skill and wit in her writing and conversation, and remain powerful in memory.’

We extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends, colleagues and the broader literary community. Prof. Wicomb’s legacy will endure in the pages she wrote, the minds she shaped, and the truths she dared to tell. Hamba kahle, Prof Wicomb.

Header image courtesy of the Windham–Campbell Prizes, Yale University