Gordimer, Nadine (redirected from Nadine Gordimer)

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.