Elsa SilkeElsa Silke grew up in Simondium, a village near Paarl in the Western Cape province of South Africa. She studied for a BA at the University of Stellenbosch, majoring in English and French. She later returned to the University of Stellenbosch for an hoors degree in English and in 2004 was awarded a master’s degree in translation. Since then she has been working as a freelance editor and translator, chiefly of literary texts. She is a four-time winner of a South African Translators’ Institute prize for outstanding translation, each time in a different category or language combination: the fiction category in 2006 for Karel Schoeman’s This Life; the nonfiction category in 2009 for Chris Karsten’s Charlize: Life’s One Helluva Ride; the children’s literature category in 2012 for Linda Rode’s In the Never-Ever Wood; and the fiction category in 2015 for Paula Marais’s Shadow Self. She has two sons, a daughter, and five grandchildren, and she and her husband live in the Strand. Read More Read Less