Privacy, Authorship, and Ownership: On Reading André Brink and Ingrid Jonker’s Letters in Flame in the Snow

Abstract

This article explores the issues raised by the publication of Flame in the Snow, the private correspondence of the South African writers André Brink and Ingrid Jonker. Events around the entry of the letters into the public domain are discussed with reference to the ethical questions they raises as well as the narrative constituted by bringing together the letters into a collection. The letters are finally read alongside the novel Orgie that Brink published while they were conducting the correspondence, to give insight into the way in which they shed light on the epistemological differences between letters as a form of life-writing and literary texts as well as issues of privacy, authorship, and ownership in the use of (auto)biographical material in a literary text.