Literary Biography Fugard

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Literary Biography of Fugard
Athol Fugard was a novelist and author who was known for describing the racism in South Africa through his work. The playwright was born in the year 1932 in Karroo division in South Africa. He was a half cast of European and Afrikaner (Attridge, 1980). His parents migrated to the port of Elizabeth near the Indian Ocean when Fugard was a little boy. He spent most of his childhood in the industrial city. Later he started to set most of the plays while in Port Elizabeth.
He studied mechanics at a local college and later went to Cape Town to study philosophy. He also studied social anthropology at the same university. Fugard quit university after three years of admission and started to tour the African continent. He later sailed to the Far East after he became a merchant sailor. He returned to South Africa in 1956 and was absorbed by South African Broadcasting Corporation. He married Sheila afterward. His wife was an actress. The couple started a theatre group and Fugard began to write plays. Fugard moved to Johannesburg whereby he got a clerical work in a nearby court. Fugard mingled with Africans and learned the extent of racism in South Africa (Attridge, 1978).
Fugard wrote his first play entitled “No Good Friday” in the slums of Johannesburg. He later wrote his second play entitled” the woman of twenty-five cents”. In the second play, he touched the effects of the racism on the people of South Africa and the vulnerable groups.

Fugard was hired by the National Theatre Organization to act as the stage manager due to his marvelous author work.
The major play of Fugard was known as the Blood knot. The play had two main characters, Morrie and Zach. Morrie was educated and well informed thus could interact with the Whites while Zach was illiterate and black. The two characters were antagonies.
Fugard later composed two other plays known as the Hello and the Goodbye. The two plays talked about the racial segregation in Port Elizabeth and how the Blacks were underestimated (Jordan, 450). The Whites and the Afrikaners were the superiors and overlooked the native Africans. Fugard wrote the plays when he in South Africa. During his last days, he lived in Port Elizabeth.
Work Cited
Attridge, Derek, and Rosemary Jolly, eds. Writing South Africa: literature, apartheid, and democracy, 1970-1995. Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Eve, Jeanette. A literary Guide to the Eastern Cape: Places and the Voices of Writers. Juta and Company Ltd, 2003.
Jordan, John O. “Life in the Theatre: Autobiography, Politics, and Romance in” Master Harold”… and the boys.” Twentieth Century Literature 39.4 (1993): 461-472.