Gordimer, Nadine

Gordimer, Nadine (nādēn` gôr`dəmər), 1923–, South African writer, b. Springs. She published her first short story at age 15 and later many of her stories appeared in The New Yorker magazine. Her collections include Selected Stories (1975), A Soldier's Embrace (1980), Jump and Other Stories (1991), and Loot and Other Stories (2003). A member of the African National Congress, Gordimer was often militantly critical of South African life in her fiction. She tendered little moral hope for whites who lived under apartheid and fought the system in her political life and her writings. In 1991 she won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her novels include The Late Bourgeois World (1966), A Guest of Honor (1970), The Conservationist (1974, Booker Prize), Burger's Daughter (1979), July's People (1981), My Son's Story (1990), The House Gun (1998), The Pickup (2001), and Get a Life (2005). She has also written many essays, often political or literary; these appear in a number of collections, among them The Essential Gesture (1988), Writing and Being (1995), and Living in Hope and History (1999). In 1998 she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Program's "Decade for the Eradication of Poverty."

Bibliography

See Conversations with Nadine Gordimer (1990), ed. by N. T. Bazin and M. D. Seymour; Writing Life: Celebrating Nadine Gordimer (1998), ed. by D. Goldblatt; studies by J. Cooke (1985), S. Clingman (1986), R. Smith, ed. (1990), K. Kreimeier (1991), B. King, ed. (1993), D. Head (1995), K. Wagner (1994), J. Uraizee (1999), B. Temple-Thurston (1999), and B. J. Uledi Kamanga (2000).

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Gordimer, Nadine

(born Nov. 20, 1923, Springs, Transvaal, S.Af.) South African writer. The daughter of Jewish immigrants, she published her first book, the story collection The Soft Voice of the Serpent, in 1952. Her later works include The Conservationist (1974, Booker Prize), Burger's Daughter (1979), July's People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Son's Story (1990), None to Accompany Me (1994), and The House Gun (1998). Written in a clear, controlled, unsentimental style, her works often concern exile and alienation. She was a strong opponent of her country's apartheid policy, and concerns about black-white relations are frequently expressed in her fiction. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

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Gordimer, Nadine 

Born 1923, near Johannesburg. South African writer.

Gordimer wrote the novels The Lying Days (1953). A World of Strangers (1958), and The Late Bourgeois World (1966). as well as collections of stories, including The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952), Six Feet of the Country (1956), and Not for Publication and Other Stories (1965). As an opponent of racism, Gordimer shows sympathy for the Africans, although she does not fully value the significance of the struggle against apartheid.

WORKS

Friday’s Footprint, and Other Stories. New York, 1960.
A Guest of Honour. New York. 1970.
In Russian translation:
Rasskazy. [Foreword by A. Petrikovskaia.] Moscow, 1971.

REFERENCES

Ulman. R. “Nadine Gordimer.” Wilson Library Bulletin, vol. 33. May 1959, no. 9, p. 616.
McGuiness, F. “The Novels of Nadine Gordimer.” London Magazine, vol. 5. June 1965, pp. 97–102.

S. P. KARTUZOV