Elleke Boehmer

Elleke Boehmer is a writer who straddles genres and perspectives. She is the author of five novels, including The Shouting in the Dark (winner of the Olive Schreiner Prize 2019), and of two collections of short stories, Sharmilla, and other portraits (2010) and To the Volcano (2019). Other publications include Postcolonial Poetics (2018), Indian Arrivals (ESSE prizewinner 2016); and Nelson Mandela: (2008, 2023). In 2025 Elleke is publishing several books about the ‘far southern edge of the world’, including Southern Imagining (Princeton) and Ice Shock, a novel. Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, and Executive Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and of the Royal Historical Society. Since 2023, she has been an Extraordinary Professor in English at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.