Author Dan Jacobson, born and raised in South Africa, has died at the age of 85. Following his childhood in Kimberley, Jacobson had married a teacher from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and moved to London where he “built up a substantial corpus of fiction dealing with his native country”.
John Sutherland writes in The Guardian that “it climaxed with The Beginners (1966). His longest work (Jacobson was never one to squander words), it was his equivalent to Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, telling the story of a dynasty of Lithuanian Jews ‘beginning’ over again in South Africa”.
In this obituary, Sutherland comments on the pace at which Jacobson’s writing evolved: “He shed authorial skins like a snake … And in his later years he moved, powerfully, into non-fictional literary territories: autobiography, travel writing and even theology.”
Dan Jacobson, who has died aged 85, should rank as one the leading novelists of his time. That he was never regarded as such was the result of a combination of factors. He was unusually hard to “place” as an author: he was born and raised in apartheid-era South Africa, but the greater part of his life was spent in Britain. His fiction evolved faster than those who most admired him could always keep up with. He shed authorial skins like a snake, each time allowing a new Jacobson to emerge – but one which sometimes disappointed those fondly attached to the old Jacobson. And in his later years he moved, powerfully, into non-fictional literary territories: autobiography, travel writing and even theology. His relationship with his inherited Judaism was intense, but complicated. “How to make sense of it all?” he mused.
He was born in Johannesburg, one of four children of a Latvian father, Hyman, and a Lithuanian mother, Liebe (nee Melamed), both of whom had fled their homelands. Jacobson was brought up in Kimberley. It was a dull town – diamonds went down with everything else in the slump – but one of the places on the globe where Jews were safe to enjoy a dull life.
Book details
- Heshel’s Kingdom by Dan Jacobson
EAN: 9780810117044
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- The Electronic Elephant: A Southern African Journey by Dan Jacobson
EAN: 9780140176209
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- The Confessions of Josef Baisz by Dan Jacobson
EAN: 978-1842321348
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- The Beginners by Dan Jacobson
EAN: 9780297173878
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Image courtesy The Guardian