She is best known for her novels, the satirical tragicomedy Triomf (1994) and the Hertzog-winning Agaat (2004), which explore themes including the family, the change in power dynamics occasioned by the end of Apartheid, and inequalities of race, gender, and class.

[1] In April 2011, her play Die korstondige raklewe van Anastasia W, set in a funeral parlour, was staged in Stellenbosch under the direction of Marthinus Basson.

[6] It divided audiences (and provoked several angry letters to the editor in Afrikaans newspapers),[7] with one favourable review calling it "a baroque assault of forms, idioms, wordplay, lyricism, operatic tragic-comic interludes, Brechtian theatrical alienation, and ripping symbolic violence.

Unemployed, they live in Triomf (“triumph”), a poor white suburb of Johannesburg, which was built on the ruins of Sophiatown, the famous black township, after the Apartheid government razed it down in the 1950s.

The New York Times called it South Africa's "only world-class tragicomic novel, the kind of book that stabs at your heart while it has you rolling on the floor.

Agaat (2004), van Niekerk's second novel, takes place in 1996, when Kamilla (Milla) de Wet is in the late stages of motor neurone disease, deteriorating daily into complete paralysis and able to communicate only by blinks and glances.

[1] Novels Poetry and short stories In 2011, the South African president awarded van Niekerk the Order of Ikhamanga (Silver) or her "outstanding intellectual contribution to the literary arts and culture.