Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer

South African novelist and short-story writer, known for her realistic character dialogue and passionate writing. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991. Fueled by feelings of frustration with the social and political predicament of a racially divided South Africa, Gordimer's writing reflects her anger at racism and political censorship.Her first story was published when she was 15 years old. Her first major collection of stories, The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952), was followed by Six Feet of the Country (1956), Friday's Footprint (1960), and Not for Publication (1965). These books present incidents of everyday life in South Africa, often from the point of view of a white middle-class character. They examine the tensions between white and non-white people forced to live under apartheid, the system of rigid racial segregation formerly in effect in South Africa. Gordimer's novels A World of Strangers (1958), Occasion for Loving (1963), and The Late Bourgeois World (1966) also address these themes.In her books, Gordimer sympathetically presents the position of nonwhites while conveying the conflicting feelings of liberal whites who live under a system they believe to be wrong. Her novel The Conservationist (1974), about a white man's exploitation of his black employees for personal gain, was a joint winner in 1974 of the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award. Burger's Daughter (1979) explores a white woman's divided feelings about apartheid when her father is imprisoned for opposing the system. July's People (1981) looks into the future, depicting a white family trying to escape from a civil war by depending upon their black servants. In My Son's Story (1990), a young black man tries to understand the conflicts of the private and public life of his father. None to Accompany Me (1994), set in postapartheid South Africa, concerns a woman who seeks self-understanding through her devotion to political causes. Writing and Being (1995) is a collection of essays.