Gillian Slovo is a South African born novelist, playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 and memoirist.

Her novels were at first predominantly of the crime and thriller genres

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, including a series featuring the detective Kate Baeier but she has since written more literary fiction. Her 2000 work, Red Dust, a courtroom drama that explores the meanings and effects of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was made into a film released in 2004

2004 in film

The year 2004 in film involved some significant events. Major releases of sequels took place. It included blockbuster films like Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Passion of the Christ, Meet the Fockers, Blade: Trinity, Spider-Man 2, Alien vs. Predator, Kill Bill Vol...

 directed by Tom Hooper

Tom Hooper (director)

Thomas George "Tom" Hooper is a British film and television director of English and Australian background. Hooper began making short films at the age of 13, and had his first professional short, Painted Faces, broadcast on Channel 4 in 1992. At Oxford University Hooper directed plays and...

 and starring Hilary Swank

Hilary Swank

Hilary Ann Swank is an American actress. Swank's film career began with a small part in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then a major part in The Next Karate Kid , as Julie Pierce, the first female protégé of sensei Mr. Miyagi...

, Chiwetel Ejiofor

Chiwetel Ejiofor

Chiwetelu Umeadi "Chiwetel" Ejiofor, OBE is an English actor of stage and screen. He has received numerous acting awards and award nominations, including the 2006 BAFTA Awards Rising Star, three Golden Globe Awards' nominations, and the 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his...

 and Jamie Bartlett

Jamie Bartlett

Jamie Bartlett is a South African actor best known for his role as the shady Mike O'Reilly on the soap opera television series Isidingo aired on the SABC 3 television channel and Crawford in Prey.-Career:...

. Her 2004

2004 in literature

The year 2004 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Canada Reads selects Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing to be read across the nation....

 work Ice Road was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction

Orange Prize for Fiction

The Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year...

. The novel incorporates real events (the death of Sergey Kirov

Sergey Kirov

Sergei Mironovich Kirov , born Sergei Mironovich Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union. Kirov rose through the Communist Party ranks to become head of the Party organization in Leningrad...

) with a fictionalised rendering of life during the Siege of Leningrad

Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...

.

Her 1997

1997 in literature

The year 1997 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tom Clancy signs a book deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. , giving him US$50 million for the world-English rights to two new books . A second agreement gives him another US$25 million for a...

 memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

, Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country, is an account of her childhood in South Africa and her relationship with her parents Joe Slovo

Joe Slovo

For Joe Slovo Informal Settlement in Cape Town, see: Joe Slovo .Joe Slovo was a South African politician, long-time leader of the South African Communist Party , and leading member of the African National Congress.-Life:Slovo was born in Obeliai, Lithuania to a Jewish family who emigrated to South...

 and Ruth First

Ruth First

Ruth First was a white South African anti-apartheid activist and scholar born in Johannesburg, South Africa...

 — both famous South Africans and major figures in the anti-apartheid struggle

History of South Africa in the apartheid era

Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority 'non-white' inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained...

 who lived perilous lives of exile, armed resistance, and occasional imprisonment, which ended with her mother's murder in 1982. A family memoir in the form of a feature film, A World Apart

A World Apart (film)

A World Apart is a 1988 anti-Apartheid drama, written by Shawn Slovo and directed by Chris Menges. It is based on the lives of Slovo's parents, Ruth First and Joe Slovo. The film was a co-production between companies from the UK and Zimbabwe, where the movie was filmed...

, was written by her sister Shawn Slovo

Shawn Slovo

Shawn Slovo is a screenwriter, best known for the film A World Apart, based on her childhood in South Africa under the apartheid. She is the daughter of the late South African Communist Party leaders Joe Slovo and Ruth First...

 and starred Barbara Hershey

Barbara Hershey

Barbara Hershey , also known as Barbara Seagull, is an American actress. In a career spanning nearly 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema, in several genres including westerns and comedies...

. With Victoria Brittain, she compiled the play Guantanamo- Honor Bound to Defend Freedom that was put on in theatres all over the world.

Gillian Slovo was born on March 15th 1952 and has lived in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 since 1964 and has one daughter, Cassie.

Novels

• Morbid Symptoms (1984)
• Death by Analysis (1986)
• Death Comes Staccato (1987)
• Ties of Blood (1989)
• The Betrayal (1991)
• Looking for Thelma (1991)
• Façade (1993)
• Catnap (1994)
• Close Call (1995)
• Red Dust (2000)
• Ice Road (2004)Review, June 5, 2004
• Black Orchids (2008)

External links

• Contemporary Writers: Gillian Slovo
• Gillian Slovo discusses Red Dust on the BBC World Book Club
  World Book Club
  World Book Club is a radio programme on the BBC World Service. Each edition of the programme, which is broadcast on the first Saturday of the month with repeats into the following Monday, features a famous author discussing one of his or her books, often the most well-known one, with the public...
  
  
• Audio/Video recording of a talk by Gillian Slovo on "Human Rights and the Arts: Guantanamo in the Theater" at the University of Chicago.