Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer’s works were a thorn in the side of the apartheid government, and although a number of them were banned she chose to stay on in Johannesburg. Ironically, 'July’s People', about a violent black revolution in SA, was considered racist and faced censorship by education authorities in the post-apartheid dispensation.

A long-time major figure in the world of books, Nadine Gordimer was the first South African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nadine Gordimer's works were a dagger in the side of the apartheid government - which banned a number of them under political censorship laws.

Co-winner of the Booker Prize in 1974 for her novel The Conservationist, which told of a white industrialist perpetuating apartheid through nature conservation, she won the ultimate literature accolade, the Nobel Prize, in 1991.

The judges noted her 'magnificent epic writing' had been of 'very great benefit to humanity'.

Other achievements were the Commonwealth Literary Award in 1961, the James Tait Memorial Prize for A Guest of Honour (1972), the Central News Agency Literary Award (4 times) and the Grand Aigle d'Or in France in 1975.

Gordimer was born of Jewish parents in the East Rand town of Springs, her father having come from Lithuania and her mother from London. Her mother was an anti-apartheid activist, and Gordimer later joined the African National Congress when it was still illegal.

Shunning exile and living in Johannesburg, Nadine Gordimer's literature often explores the difficulties and heartache of love across the colour line.

The New Yorker published her A Watcher of the Dead in 1951, and as she felt the short story was the literary form of the age, she wrote them for journals throughout her career.

Her first novel, The Lying Days, appeared in 1953, and in the 1960s and 70s she periodically taught at universities in the United States.

The Late Bourgeois World was banned in 1976, as was The World of Strangers and Burger's Daughter (1979). July's People is about a revolution in which whites are hunted down, and a couple take refuge in their domestic's home. The Pickup (2002) deals with displacement and alienation, and her 2005 novel Get a Life tells of a dying activist.

FONTE: http://www.southafrica.net/
FOTO: word.world-citizenship.org

A black and white tale of 1960s apartheid

A black and white tale of 1960s apartheid

Friday July 24 2009
Book 14 -- The Late Bourgeois World, by Nadine Gordimer

The Irish Independent Lifetime Reads collection of 20 modern classics continues tomorrow with Book 14 -- The Late Bourgeois World by the great South African writer Nadine Gordimer.
The story is set in the early 1960s in South Africa, a country in which apartheid is still a strange and cherished normality for whites enforced by brutal state repression. But opposition is growing and not all whites can ignore the fact that there is something very wrong with the South African way of life. Like Liz Van Den Sandt.
Liz's ex-husband Max, an ineffectual rebel, has drowned himself. In prison for a failed act of violence against the government, he had betrayed his colleagues.
Now Liz has been asked to perform a service for the black nationalist movement, at considerable danger to herself. Can she take such a risk in the face of Max's example of the uselessness of such actions? Yet ... how can she not?
Colm Tóibín says this is "a perfect novel about the damage South Africa did to its citizens during apartheid ... written with tenderness and a penetrating moral wisdom."
Nadine Gordimer was born in South Africa in 1923 and still lives there. She was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 1974 and has also been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Building your book collection:
The 20 titles in the Lifetime Reads collection of modern classics (see list below) were selected with advice from the writer Colm Tóibín and include many of the best novels published since 1950.
The collection spans the spectrum from stunning literary novels like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children to great popular reads like Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal.
Each Saturday a new book from the collection will be published and will be available to readers at €4.99, a bargain price for a quality hardback. Back copies are available. The books have matching covers and build into an impressive collection.

FONTE: Irish Independent - Dublin,Ireland

http://www.independent.ie/

FOTO: http://www.guardian.co.uk/

***