Rian Malan
| Rian Malan | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1954 (age 62–63) Johannesburg, South Africa |
| Occupation | Author, journalist, documentarist, musician, songwriter |
| Genre | Memoirs, investigative journalism |
| Notable works | My Traitor's Heart, In the Jungle |
| Alien Inboorling | |
|---|---|
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|
| Studio album by Rian Malan | |
| Released | 2005-10-28 |
| Genre | Afrikaans, folk, world, country |
| Length | 58:05 |
| Language | Afrikaans |
| Label | Shifty Music/Sony BMG |
| Producer | Lloyd Ross |
Rian Malan (born 1954, in Johannesburg) is a South African author, journalist, documentarist and songwriter of Afrikaner descent. He first rose to prominence as the author of the memoir My Traitor's Heart, which, like the bulk of his work, deals with South African society in a historical and contemporary perspective and focuses on racial relations. As a journalist, he has written for major newspapers in South Africa, Great Britain and the USA.
Malan grew up in a middle-class and pro-apartheid Afrikaner family in a white suburb of Johannesburg. He attended Blairgowrie Primary School in Randburg. He has described how, as a teenager, he formed a rock band that associated with black artists and wanted to rebel against the apartheid system, at a time when he in fact had virtually no interaction with black people. He attended the then Witwatersrand University for a year. To avoid conscription, which was compulsory for all white males (see End Conscription Campaign), he moved to Los Angeles in 1977 and worked as a journalist.
Returning to South Africa in the 1980s, he wrote My Traitor's Heart, his memoir of growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa in which he explores race relations through prominent murder cases. In addition, he reflects on the history of his family, a prominent Afrikaner clan that migrated to the Cape in the 17th century and included Daniel François Malan, the South African Prime Minister who was a principal ideological force behind Apartheid doctrine. The book, which became a best-seller, was translated into 11 languages.
Malan began his journalistic career in 1975, as a reporter for The Star. During his stay in the US, he served as managing editor for Music Connection (1978), as news editor for LA Weekly (1979), as staff writer for New West Magazine (California) (1981), as senior writer for Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (1984) and as senior editor for Manhattan Magazine (1984). Since then, he has been a freelance writer for various magazines, mainly in the US (e.g. Esquire, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal), Great Britain (e.g. The Spectator and The Sunday Times) and South Africa (e.g. The Star, Time and Noseweek). A number of his essays are collected in the volume The Lion Sleeps Tonight and other stories of South Africa (New York: Grove Press, 2012), .
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