Willem Carel van der Merwe was born on 7 September 1963 in Johannesburg. He
attended schools in Johannesburg, Witbank and Cologne, Germany, and graduated
from Linden High School in 1981. After completing his military service, he
attended Stellenbosch University (1986 B.Acc degree) and the University of
Cape Town (1987 GDA). During this time he played lock for the Akker XV, the
first Stellenbosch University affiliated rugby team to compete in the then
black SARA rugby league. He completed his Chartered Accountant professional exams in 1988, and
thereafter worked at Arthur Andersen & Co, in Johannesburg and London. In 1991
he joined Rand Merchant Bank's Corporate Finance Division, and in 1995 he
co-founded African Merchant Bank. In 2000 he took up a position in London as an
executive director of Comparex, an international IT group. He lived and worked
in London for the next six years, completing a part-time MA (Writing) degree
(with distinction) during this time. In 2004 he published his first short story, The Water Mountains, in an UK short story collection. At the beginning of 2006 he returned to
South Africa and settled in Stellenbosch with his wife and two young daughters.
In 2007 he published his debut novels, Nasleep and No Man's Land, written by him in Afrikaans and English respectively. He also wrote his next
novel in both languages, and Shark and Geldwolf were published in 2009. He currently owns and manages an investment and advisory company, Grapetown
Capital.
Hobbies: Travelling, gholf, buying books, gym. Favourite books: Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell), War and Peace (Tolstoy) Atomised (Michel Houellebecq) The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen) The Glass Bead Game (Hermann Hesse) The Magic Mountain (Thomas Mann) Favourite Quote: All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in
its own way
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