Elleke Boehmer was born in Durban and lives in Oxford. She is the author of five novels, Screens against the Sky (1990), An Immaculate Figure (1993), Bloodlines (2000), Nile Baby (2008), and The Shouting in the Dark (2015). Screens against the Sky was short-listed for the David Higham Prize, and Bloodlines for the Sanlam Prize. The Shouting in the Dark was long-listed for the Sunday Times prize (South Africa), and appears in a new Australian edition in 2019. She is the author and editor of over fifteen other books, including Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995, 2nd edn. 2005), the biography Nelson Mandela (2008), Stories of Women (2005), Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire (2015), Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-century readings (2018), and the British best-seller Scouting for Boys (2004, 2018). Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire was the winner of the biennial ESSE 2015-16 Prize. She has edited or co-edited a number of essay collections including J.M Coetzee in Context and Theory (2009) and Planned Violence (2018). Her second collection of short stories, To the volcano, and other stories is published in 2019 and follows Sharmilla, and other Portraits (2010).
Elleke Boehmer is the Professor of World Literature in English, in the English Faculty at the University of Oxford.
Fellows are nominated by peers and elected by our Council of writers – our governing Board. Being elected a Fellow of the RSL is a lifetime honour. This role gives them the opportunity to support other writers, readers and the future of literature. The RSL connects writers in the Fellowship to one another, and to a wider readership.
