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Gillian Slovo

Gillian Slovo
Slovo in 2011
Born	(1952-03-15) 15 March 1952 (age 72)
Occupation	Novelist, playwright
Parents	Joe Slovo, Ruth First
Relatives	Shawn Slovo, Robyn Slovo (siblings)

Gillian Slovo (born 15 March 1952) is a South African-born writer who lives in the UK. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.

Gillian Slovo was born on 15 March 1952 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her family moved to London in 1964, as political exiles.^[1] Her family is Jewish.^[2]

Slovo attended the University of Manchester, graduating in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in the history and philosophy of science, before working as a journalist and television producer.^[1]

Slovo's novels were at first predominantly of the crime and thriller genres, 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 of the same name released in 2004, directed by Tom Hooper.^{[citation needed]}

Slovo's 2004 work Ice Road was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. The novel incorporates real events (the death of Sergey Kirov) with a fictionalised rendering of life during the Siege of Leningrad.^{[citation needed]}

With Victoria Brittain, Slovo wrote the play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, which was staged internationally in 2004.^[3]

Slovo's 1997 memoir, Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country, is an account of her childhood in South Africa and her relationship with her parents Joe Slovo and Ruth First – both South African Communist Party leaders and figures in the anti-apartheid struggle who lived perilous lives of exile, armed resistance, and occasional imprisonment, which culminated in her mother's assassination by South African forces in 1982.^{[citation needed]}

A family memoir in the form of a feature film, A World Apart (1988), was written by her sister Shawn Slovo and starred Barbara Hershey. ^{[citation needed]}

Slovo was the 25th president of the English Centre of International PEN, the worldwide writers fellowship. In 2012 she took part in a PEN International delegation to Mexico to protest against the killing of journalists in that country, alongside presidents of other PEN Centres and internationally prominent writers.^[4]

In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, Slovo signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated that "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."^[5][6]

Source^[7]

• Morbid Symptoms (1984)
• Death by Analysis (1986)
• Death Comes Staccato (1987)
• Catnap (1994)
• Close Call (1995)

• Ties of Blood (1989)
• The Betrayal (1991)
• Looking for Thelma (1991)
• Façade (1993)
• Red Dust (2000)
• Ice Road (2004)
• Black Orchids (2008)
• An Honourable Man (2012)^[8]
• Ten Days (2016)^[9]

• Guantanamo : Honor Bound to Defend Freedom (with Victoria Brittain) (2005)
• The Riots^[10]

• Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country (1997)

• 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist for Ice Road^[11][12]
• 2013 Golden PEN Award^[13]

• Blackwell, Geoff; Hobday, Ruth (31 October 2017). 200 Women. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. pp. 178–179. ISBN 9781452166582. OCLC 1007173093.

• Contemporary Writers: Gillian Slovo
• Gillian Slovo discusses Red Dust on the BBC World Book Club
• Audio/Video recording of a talk by Gillian Slovo on "Human Rights and the Arts: Guantanamo in the Theater" at the University of Chicago.
• Interview of Gillian Slovo by Anthony ClareonBBC Radio 4's In the Psychiatrist's Chair (originally broadcast August 1997), based in part on her biography