15+ questions for Fanie Naudé

HE grew up in suburban Gauteng and spent holidays on a farm in the Eastern Free State. S.J. (Fanie) Naudé studied in Pretoria, Stellenbosch, Britain and America and worked as a legal practitioner in the northern hemisphere for many years. His books have been published in several languages ​​and have won several prizes, including the UJ Literature Prize for Afrikaans, the kykNet-Rapport Prize for fiction, the Nadine Gordimer Short Story Prize and the Hertzog Prize.

1. Describe yourself in a hashtag?

One of the reasons I've never participated in any social media is the avoidance of that kind of self-description ...

2. The app on your phone that you use the most?

In addition to WhatsApp with its cacophonous groups, The New Yorker.

3. What does a normal day in your life look like?

The alarm goes off at six. Then it's the school run, then CrossFit or Pilates, then reading and writing, the school run again, then grade 1 homework, then answering emails and reading and writing, then evening routines.

4. If you had to choose one source for your news (other than VWB), what would it be?

One won't do. CNN, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC News, Mail & Guardian, News24. And, once a week, Fox News, so you don't forget what vapours keep rising from the underbelly.

5. What are you reading at the moment?

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden. And Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor.

6. What other country would you like to work in?

I've worked in far too many countries. I'd rather find a place for extended downtime (creative idleness). Maybe a quieter part of the Croatian or Italian coast. Or Piran in Slovenia.

7. What was the moment you knew your life had changed forever?

When I arrived in New York at age 26.

8. What do you listen to in your car?

Mostly to silence (the wind). Sometimes Fine Music Radio. Sometimes to contemporary composers or British art pop. Sometimes to some heart-rhythm-disturbing countertenor.

9. Is there a book you can recommend to everyone?

Voss by Patrick White.

10. The highlight of your working life?

If I were to consider my former legal career as my working life (is writing a job?) the highs were every time I got a new job offer after an intense round of interviews. Quick on its heels was the low, the moment I realised that I actually still had to do the work.

11. What kind of films do you enjoy?

The ones I haven't seen yet.

12. Your favourite authors?

A few locally: the South African Coetzee, Galgut, Van Niekerk, Winterbach, Anker, Heyns, Rose-Innes, Ntshanga and Schoeman. A few elsewhere: the Australian Coetzee, Colm Tóibín, Marilynne Robinson, Brandon Taylor, W.G. Sebald and Thomas Bernhard.

13. What book do you wish you had written?

Embers by Sándor Márai or Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Or maybe Extinction by Thomas Bernhard.

14. What do you regret?

That one can only live one life, trapped in one body and one identity context. (If it were otherwise, it would be unnecessary to write.)

15. What are you afraid of?

Sudden loss.

16. Your favourite scent?

That of fynbos, at a high altitude above sea level, where the air begins to thin and thoughts become sparse and breathless, so that scents drive away thinking. 

17. Your earliest perception as a child? 

The sound of long grass in a Free State landscape.

18. Guilty pleasure?

True crime television series.

19. Your emotional age?

Forever 26.

20. If you could invite three people to dinner, who would it be and where?

My late father and mother. In the kitchen of our former home in Sibelius Street in Pretoria. And, rather than a third person, the pets of my youth: Fritsie, the dachshund, and Grietjie, my Free State pug. To be fed quietly under the table. (The refrigerator that rumbles. The velvet of canine lips against the palm. My parents' strangely familiar voices. The leaves of the thorn tree that blow like sand against the window.)

21. How would you describe your style?

Somewhere between Banana Republic (an American clothing store that was cool in the 1990s, long gone) and clothes from the co-op. Unless you mean my writing style, in which case somewhere between the East Village and Hell’s Kitchen (or a Gramercy Park penthouse and a 1970s sex club).

22. What would you change about yourself if you could?

 I would temper my eternal never-to-be-disappointed hope and expectation (and never-ending urge and longing).

23. Your favourite art gallery?

Several: Zeno X in Antwerp (before it closed in 2023), Tate Modern and White Cube (the one in London SE1), Pace in New York, Michael Stevenson in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

24. If you could choose a painter to do your portrait, who would it be?

Michaël Borremans or Luc Tuymans. Or no, wait: Hermann Nitsch, who, naked, would empty a bucket of blood on a canvas, and lo and behold!

25. What are you looking forward to?

The next American election.

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.