Amsterdam novel collects awards

Multi-award-winning author Professor Etienne van Heerden of UCT's Afrikaans and Netherlandic Studies section has won the 2009 M-Net Literary Award for his latest novel, 30 Nagte in Amsterdam (30 Nights in Amsterdam).

This is the novel's second award, the first being the 2008 University of Johannesburg Creative Writing in Afrikaans prize.

Van Heerden's 11th novel tells the story of a lowly museum assistant who learns that his late aunt Zan has left him a house in Amsterdam. He visits the house, and "as he confronts Zan's past, he also looks differently at his own," says Van Heerden.