Awerbuck, Diane
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1974- ) South African author whose first novel, the highly regarded Gardening at Night (2004), is nonfantastic; she has also written in collaboration with Alex Latimer as Frank Owen. She began to publish work of genre interest with the stories assembled as Cabin Fever (coll 2011), and is of strong sf interest for the Divided States sequence comprising South (2016) and North (2018), written with Latimer as Owen, which is set in a Near Future Alternate History version of North America. The Civil War, long deferred, has splintered the United States, which is now divided in two by a wall entirely incapable of protecting any population, north or south, from the rampant wind-blown viruses we as a species have unleashed upon ourselves, though the northern lands are comparatively safe. There are hints that the End of the World may be averted. Some arguably excessive switches in pace and timing may be due to the contrasting literary backgrounds of the two authors. Awerbuck may have been primarily responsible for some of the haunting introspections that articulate the tale. [JC]
Diane Awerbuck
born Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa: 1 April 1974
works
series
Divided States
- South (London: Atlantic Books/Corvus, 2016) with Alex Latimer as Frank Owen [Divided States: hb/]
- North (London: Atlantic Books/Corvus, 2018) with Alex Latimer as Frank Owen [Divided States: pb/]
collections and stories
- Cabin Fever (Cape Town, South Africa: Random House Struik/Umuzi, 2011) [coll: pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry