Dennis Walder

Born in CapeTown to Swiss German parents, Dennis Walder is a graduate of the universities of Cape Town and Edinburgh. He is Emeritus Professor of Literature at the Open University and has published widely on 19th and 20th century literature, including the best-selling Literature in the Modern World. Other books include Dickens and Religion, Athol Fugard, and Postcolonial Nostalgias. One of his short stories ('The Place', Stand 2011), was runner-up for the V S Pritchett Prize. His latest book, Amid the Alien Corn: A Son's Memoir (2025), takes its narrator from the bewilderment of childhood and youth towards the unfolding of his mother Ruth's secrets, long suspected from a pervasive sense of something missing at the heart of his family.