Hoewel Olga Kirsch die enigste Joodse stem in die Afrikaanse digkuns is, is dit skaars bekend onder lede van die Suid-Afrikaanse Joodse gemeenskap. Olga Kirsch was, na Elisabeth Eybers, maar die tweede vrou wat ’n digbundel in Afrikaans laat verskyn het. Die doelwit van hierdie biografie is om te keer dat haar werk vergete raak en om te wys waarom haar werk belangrik is, nie net in Suid-Afrika nie, maar ook in Israel. Dit ondersoek nie net Kirsch se rol as Afrikaanse Joodse digter nie, maar ook haar as voorbeeld van ’n grensoorsteker tussen kulture en veeltalige immigrante-digter. Daarom is van haar Engelse en Hebreeuse digkuns ook ingesluit in hierdie werk.

Although Olga Kirsch’s is the only Jewish voice in Afrikaans poetry, it is scarcely known among members of the South African Jewish community. Olga Kirsch was, after Elisabeth Eybers, only the second woman to publish a collection of poetry in Afrikaans. The aims of this biography are to reverse this slide into obscurity and to show why her work is important not only in South Africa but also in Israel. It does not only investigate Kirsch’s role as Afrikaans Jewish poet but also examines her as an example of a cross-cultural, multi-lingual immigrant poet. As such some of her English and Hebrew poetry are included in this work.

Die e-boek is te koop direk op Amazon: Koop e-boek Olga Kirsch: A Life in Poetry (e-Boek) “Olga Kirsch needs to be more widely known in South African letters. She is well known is Afrikaans circles, but she is selectively appreciated there and in English South African literary history she is hardly known at all. The biography brings the various threads of Kirsch’s life and work together, showing their complex interrelationship, their multilingualism and cross- culturalism. In particular, it gives Kirsch the nuanced, complex positioning between languages and cultures that she deserves. Kirsch’s poetry is a bridge between cultures that are otherwise scarcely in communication.

Searching for Papa’s Secrets in Hitler’s Berlin. Egonne Roth’s book is a moving journey of discovery into the unexplored continent that is often our families’ past. It can be read as a reconstruction of one’s own Jewish and at the same time European-South African roots, but through these micro-histories we arrive at the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust to the level of macro-history. Roth’s work brilliantly illustrates the complex mechanism of intergenerational, communicative memory and cultural memory (described by Jan and Aleida Assmann, among others ). On a feminist level, it is also a personal history of the daughter-father relationship, leading to a kind of purification, a catharsis. The detective-like reconstruction of the multi-ethnic segments of the family’s history has as its backdrop the arduous completion of one’s own biography from scraps of documents, accounts of the now few witnesses, secrets, and traumas hidden for decades. This is an extremely fascinating read! – Prof dr. hab Magdalena Koch, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland *** Egonne Roth is an Israeli-South African writer, who was born in Cape Town and now lives in Nahariya, Israel. Her first book, Olga Kirsch, a Life in Poetry, (Naledi, 2018) was published in both English and Afrikaans to critical acclaim. As the daughter of an immigrant father, who survived Hitler’s Berlin as a half Jew, this memoir is the exploration of how his experiences shaped her life. *** NON FICTION 213 x 137 mm 306 pages ISBN: 9781776172672