Sven Eick
Biographical info
Sven Eick was born in Johannesburg in 1977. His unusual name was the result of his paternal grandfather's German Jewish roots combined with the semantic sensitivities of his Afrikaans mother. He started reading at an early age, quickly developing a taste for the existential satire of Douglas Adams, and the whimsical autobiographical style of Gerald Durrell. Sven began writing in earnest at the age of thirteen, and apart from infrequent and unfounded accusations of plagiarism (counterbalanced by more frequent charges of mental retardation and profound personality disorder), achieved some success in this area.
Sven surprised everybody, not least himself, by matriculating in 1995 from Crawford College in Johannesburg. The following year he moved down to Cape Town to study at UCT. In 2002 Sven temporarily abandoned his sustained drive to become the most highly educated first-year student in the country and applied to work for a Cruise Line. He travelled around the world for four years learning to speak patois in a fluent Jamaican accent, whilst serving thousands of Pina Coladas.
During his extended vacation periods he began writing full length fiction pieces, a pursuit which culminated in the completion of ‘The Curse of the Lazarus Bones’, a novella for young adults, in 2003. During 2003 two pieces of his writing were published in that year’s Laugh It Off Annual. Writing under his pseudonym he also won a Waterman pen for best letter written to SL magazine, which he subsequently never received.
Once he had realised the direction of his true calling, Sven resigned from his exciting shipboard career and set about writing in earnest. Sven plans to study Honours in Psychology in 2008, whilst continuing his writing. In his spare time he plays guitar, writes newsletters which reflect his lifelong allegiance to the paranoid school of Sociology, and watches the films of Terrence Mallick. He hopes to hone his skills in graphic arts within the next ten years, and has a future in professional rugby planned thereafter.
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