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 South
African novelist and short-story writer, who received the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1991. Gordimer's main themes are exile,
loneliness and strong political opposition towards racial segregation.
She was a founding member of Congress of South African Writers,
and even at the height of the apartheid regime, she never considered
leaving her country.
Nadine Gordimer was born into a well-off family in Springs, Transvaal,
an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. It was the setting
for Gordimer's first novel, THE LYING DAYS (1953). Her father was
a Jewish jeweller originally from Latvia and her mother of British
descent. From her early childhood Gordimer witnessed the increase
of white power at the expense of the rights of the black majority.
Gordimer was educated in a convent school and she spent a year at
Witwaterstrand University, Johannesburg without taking a degree.
Often kept at home by a mother who imagined she had a weak heart,
Gordimer began writing from the age of nine and her first story,
'Come Again Tomorrow', appeared in the Johannesburg magazine Forum
when she was fifteen. By her twenties Gordimer had stories published
in many of the local magazines and in 1951 the New Yorker
accepted a story, publishing her ever since.
 From
her first collection of short stories, FACE TO FACE (1949), which
is not listed in some of her biographies, Gordimer has revealed
the effects of alienation of the races on society. It was followed
by THE SOFT VOICE OF THE SERPENT (1952), and novel The Lying
Days (1953), which exhibited Gordimer's unsentimental technique,
already hallmark of her narrative. The story was based largely on
the author's own life and depicted a white girl who attempts to
escape the racism of a small-town life. Other works in the 1950s
and 1960s include A WORLD OF STRANGERS (1958), OCCASION FOR LOVING
(1963), and THE LATE BOURGEOIS WORLD (1966). In these novels Gordimer
studies the master-servant relations characteristic of South African
life, spiritual and sexual paranoia's of colonialism, and the political
responsibilities of privileged white South Africans.
"A line in a statute book has more authority than the claims
of one man's love or another's. All claims of natural feeling
are over-ridden alike by a line in a statute book that takes no
account of humanness, that recognises neither love nor respect
nor jealousy nor rivalry nor compassion nor hate - nor any human
attitude where there are black and white together. What Boaz felt
towards Ann; what Gideon felt towards Ann, what Ann felt about
Boaz, what she felt for Gideon - all this that was real and rooted
in life was void before the clumsy words that reduced the delicacy
and towering complexity of living to a race theory..."
(from Occasion for Loving)
Occasion for Loving was concerned with the 'line in a statute
book' - South Africa's cruel racial law. In the story an illicit
love affair between a black man and a white woman ends bitterly.
Ann Davis is married to a gentle Jew called Boaz Davis, a dedicated
scholar who has travelled all over the country in search of African
music. Gideon Shibalo, a talented painter, is black, he has a marriage
and several affairs behind. The liberal Mrs Jessie Stilwell is a
reluctant hostess to the law-breaking lovers. Boaz, the cuckold,
is on the side of the struggling South African black majority, and
Ann plays with two men's emotions.
 Gordimer
won early international recognition for her short stories and novels.
THE CONSERVATIONIST (1974) juxtaposed wealthy white South African
world with the rituals and mythology of Zulus. BURGER'S DAUGHTER
(1979), written during the aftermath of Soweto uprising. In the
story a daughter analyses her relationship to her father. JULY'S
PEOPLE (1981) was a futuristic novel about a white family feeing
from war-torn Johannesburg to the country. Gordimer's early short
story collections include SIX FEET OF THE COUNTRY (1956), NOT FOR
PUBLICATION (1965) and LIVINGSTONE'S COMPANIONS (1971).
Since 1948 Gordimer has lived in Johannesburg and taught in the
USA in several universities during the 1960s and '70s. She has written
books of non-fiction on South African subjects and made television
documentaries, notably collaborating with her son Hugo Cassirer
on the television film Choosing Justice: Allan Boesak. In
THE HOUSE GUN (1998) Gordimer explored the problems of the violence
ridden post-apartheid society through a murder trial. Two white
privileged liberals, Harald and Claudia Lindgard, face the fact
that their architect-son, Duncan, has killed his friend Carl Jesperson.
Where does it lead, when violence becomes the common hell?
For further reading: The Novels of Nadine Gordimer by
Stephen Clingman (1986); The Novels of Nadine Gordimer by John
Cooke; Nadine Gordimer by Christopher Heywood; Critical Essays
on Nadine Gordimer, ed. by Rowland Smith (1990); Nadine Gordimer
by Dominic Head (1994); Rereading Nadine Gordimer by Kathrin Wagner
(1994) - Note 1: Gordimer's Burger's Daughter (1979) was
banned after the Soweto uprising, André Brink's Looking on Darkness
(1974) was banned by the authorities. Also J.M. Coetzee has explored
in his works the effects of apartheid - all three are among the
best-known white South African writers. - Note 2: Nadine
Gordimer rejected in 1998 the candidacy for Orange Award, because
the award was restricted to woman writers. - Only nine women have
received (1901-1997) the Nobel Prize for literature: Selma Lagerlof,
Sigrid Undset, Grazia Deledda, Pearl S.Buck, Gabriela Mistral,
Nelly Sachs, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Wislawa Szymborska
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