Michael Cawood Green

Born and raised in Pinetown, Green spent a year in California as an exchange student and then supported his studies at the University of Natal (and a musical career that drew more attention from the Security Branch than the music industry) as a stoker on the railways. 3rd Ear Music released White Eyes, an album of his songs in 1982.

Green completed his Masters at Stanford and Doctorate at York. He is a Professor of English at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Head of the School of Literary Studies, Media and Creative Arts.

Green has won a Commonwealth Fellowship and twice been the recipient of the university's Distinguished Teacher Award. He is the current Chair of the Association of University English Teachers of Southern Africa and has served as chair of the UKZN Press committee. Professor Green is on the board of several journals, is a reader for two publishing houses, and is a rated researcher with the National Research Foundation.

Green has published many academic articles, mainly on the uses of history in fiction, which is also the subject of his scholarly book Novel Histories (WUP, 1997). He has published two works of historical fiction. Sinking: A Verse Novella (Penguin, 1997) whuich won the University of Natal Book Prize, and For the Sake of Silence (Umuzi/Random House, 2008) is currently being widely reviewed.

J M Coetzee, Nobel Laureate, says of For the Sake of Silence:
“Of the Trappist enterprise in nineteenth-century South Africa, with all its passionate personal rivalries and Byzantine internal politics, Michael Cawood Green has made a work of history cum fiction that will grip and sometimes amaze the reader.”

“As a book that speaks to the muteness of history, one that ruptures the silence of time past, and further, as a book that talks so very eloquently about those who would not speak at all, [For the Sake of Silence] is a unique literary event in South Africa.”
Leon de Kok, Sunday Times

Further Information, reviews, etc are available at Michael Cawood Green’s Website: http://www.english.ukzn.ac.za/MichaelGreenonline.htm