Dalene Matthee

Born Dalene Scott in the Southern Cape of South Africa, Dalene Matthee graduated high school in 1957. That same year, she married Larius Matthee, a local bank clerk. Matthee originally got her start as a writer writing in Afrikaans, although she also did the English-language translations for most of her works. She wrote children’s stories for the South African Broadcasting Corporation while living in Darling, outside of Cape Town. Her family continued to move around, at one point settling in Long Kloof on the Southern Cape. In the late 1970s, Dalene began publishing her first short stories for adults. Eventually, her husband’s health problems and early retirement led the family to move to Hartenbos on the Western Cape of South Africa. It was there that Matthee wrote her best-known works: the “forest novels,” whose titles (in English translation) are Circles in a Forest, Fiela’s Child, The Mulberry Forest, and Dream Forest. Although the novels all stand alone, they all take place in or around the Knysna forest, where Matthee herself spent a lot of time. Matthee went on to earn acclaim and literary awards for her work, particularly the “forest novels,” with Fiela’s Child and Circles in the Forest being adapted into films. She died in 2005, just 10 days after finishing the English-language translation of her novel Driftwood.