Mr. Behr was born in Tanzania, South Africa, on October 19, 1963. He was born in a family of farmers in the district of Oljorro, Arusha, Tanzania, then still Tanganyika. After the nationalisation of white-owned farms during the implementation of President Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa Policy of African Socialism in 1964, the family emigrated to South Africa. Mr. Behr's father was a game ranger in the game parks of KwaZulu-Natal, where Behr spent his early youth.
Between ages ten and twelve Mark Behr attended the Drakensberg Boys' Choir School, a private music academy in the Drakensberg Mountains of KwaZulu-Natal and after that Port Natal High School.
After leaving the South African Defence Force, Behr attended Stellenbosch University in the Western-Cape Province of South Africa with a Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in English and Politics. He enrolled at the University of Notre Dame in the United States where he studied with Joseph Buttigieg, the translator of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Behr graduated from Notre Dame with Master's degrees in International Peace Studies in 1993, Fiction Writing in 1998, and English Literature in 2000.
Mark Behr was a professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee. He also taught in the MA program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Military service: South African National Defense Force, served in Angola. He served in the Angolan War, becoming a junior officer in the Marine Corps.
He has published novels, short stories and essays. His work is often concerned with issues of violence, racism, nationalism, militarisation, masculinity and colonialism. Behr's work is extensively translated and has received awards from the Los Angeles Times, the United Kingdom British Society of Authors, and the Academy of Science of South Africa. He travels regularly between the United States and South Africa.
(Winner of the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction from...)
1993(Embrace is the story of the awakening of Karl De Man, a t...)
(The Smell Of Apples by Prof Mark Behr (4-Apr-1996) Paperb...)
(The Smell Of Apples by Prof Mark Behr (1996-04-04) [Prof ...)
(Kings Of The Water [Prof Mark Behr])
(Die Reuk Van Appels [Mark Behr])
1996
