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Michiel Heyns was born on 2 December 1943 in Stellenbosch. He went to school in Thaba Nchu, Kimberley and Grahamstown. He studied at the Universities of Stellenbosch and at Cambridge and was a professor in English at the University of Stellenbosch from 1987 until his early retirement to become a full-time author in 2003.

He has written four novels since The Children’s Day was translated into Afrikaans as Verkeerdespruit: These are: The Reluctant Passenger, The Typewriter’s Tale, Bodies Politic, Lost Ground, and his most recent novel, Invisible Furies published in 2012. All are published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. He has also become renowned as a translator, and was awarded the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, for his translation of Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat, where it was the first translated book ever to win. This translation also won him the Sol Plaatje Award for Translating

In 2003 he taught as a visiting professor at the University of Tulsa, teaching creative writing. He currently lives in Somerset West and reviews regularly for the Sunday Independent.