Gillian Slovo

Gillian Slovo is a South African born novelist, playwright and memoirist.

Her 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 released in 2004 directed by Tom Hooper and starring Hilary Swank, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jamie Bartlett. Her 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.

Her 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 famous South Africans and major figures in the anti-apartheid struggle who lived perilous lives of exile, armed resistance, and occasional imprisonment, which culminated in her mother's murder by South African forces in 1982. A family memoir in the form of a feature film, A World Apart, was written by her sister Shawn Slovo and starred Barbara Hershey. With Victoria Brittain, she compiled the play Guantanamo- Honor Bound to Defend Freedom that was put on in theatres all over the world.

Gillian Slovo was born on March 15, 1952 and has lived in London since 1964 and has one daughter, Cassie.