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Nadine Gordimer (born 20 November 1923 ) is a South Africa n Writer , political activist and winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize In Literature . Her writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly Apartheid in South Africa. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes. EARLY LIFE She was born in . Gordimer's early interest in racial and economic inequality in South Africa was shaped in part by her parents. Her father's experience as a Jewish refugee in czarist Russia helped form Gordimer's political identity, but he was neither an activist nor particularly sympathetic toward the experiences of black people under apartheid." A Writer's Life: Nadine Gordimer ", April 3, 2006, ''Telegraph''. Conversely, Gordimer saw activism by her mother, whose concern about the poverty and discrimination faced by black people in South Africa led her to found a crèche for black children.Per Wästberg, Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience , April 26, 2001. (Nobel Prize article.). Gordimer also experienced government repression firsthand, when as a teenager the police raided her family home, confiscating letters and diaries from a servant's room.Per Wästberg, Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience , April 26, 2001. (Nobel Prize article.). Gordimer was educated at a ; "Come Again Tomorrow," another children's story, appeared in ''Forum'' around the same time. At the age of 15, she had her first adult fiction published." Nadine Gordimer: ''A Sport of Nature'' , The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards]. Gordimer studied for a year at in 1948, where she has lived ever since. While taking classes in Johannesburg, Gordimer continued to write, publishing mostly in local South African magazines. She collected many of these early stories in ''Face to Face'', published in 1949 . In 1951 , the '' New Yorker '' accepted Gordimer's story "A Watcher of the Dead",New Yorker, June 9, 1951. beginning a long relationship, and bringing Gordimer's work to a much larger public. Gordimer, who has said she believes the short story is the literary form for our age, Nadine Gordimer , ''Guardian Unlimited'' (last visited Jan. 25, 2007). has continued to publish short stories in the New Yorker and other prominent literary journals. Gordimer's first novel, ''The Lying Days'', was published in 1953 . In 1954, she married Reinhold Cassirer, a highly respected art dealer who established the South African Sotheby's and later ran his own gallery; their "wonderful marriage"" A Writer's Life: Nadine Gordimer ", April 3, 2006, ''Telegraph''. lasted until his death from emphysema in 2001. It was her second marriage and his third. Their son, Hugo, was born in 1955, and is today a filmmaker in New York, with whom Gordimer has collaborated on at least two documentaries. Gordimer also had a daughter during this time. POLITICAL AND LITERARY ACTIVISM The arrest of her best friend, Bettie du Toit, in 1960 and the 's defense attorneys ( Bram Fischer and George Bizos ) during his 1962 trial.Per Wästberg, Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience , April 26, 2001. (Nobel Prize article.). When Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Gordimer was one of the first people he wanted to see.Per Wästberg, Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience , April 26, 2001. (Nobel Prize article.). During the 1960s and 1970s , she continued to live in Johannesburg , although she occasionally left for short periods of time to teach at several universities in the United States . She had begun to achieve international literary recognition, receiving her first major award in 1961.The W. H. Smith Commonwealth Literary Award . Throughout this time, Gordimer continued to demand through both her writing and her activism that South Africa re-examine and replace its long held policy of Apartheid . During this time, the South African government banned several of her works, two for lengthy periods of time. ''The Late Bourgeouis World'', was Gordimer's first personal experience with censorship; it was banned in 1976 for a decade by the South African government.Gail Caldwell, " South African Writer Given Nobel ", ''The Boston Globe'', Oct. 4, 1991.Jonathan Steele, " White Magic ", ''London Guardian'', Oct. 27, 2001. ''A World of Strangers'' was banned for twelve years.Jonathan Steele, " White Magic ", ''London Guardian'', Oct. 27, 2001. Other works were censored for lesser amounts of time. ''Burger's Daughter'', published in June, 1979, was banned one month later; the Publications Committee's Appeal Board reversed the censorship of ''Burger's Daughter'' six months later, determining that the book was too one-sided to be subversive." Radiation, Race, and Molly Bloom: Nadine Gordimer Talks with ''BookForum'' ", BookForum, Feb. / March 2006. Gordimer responded to this decision in ''Essential Gesture'' (1988), pointing out that the board banned two books by black authors at the same time it unbanned her own work.Gordimer wrote an account of the censorship in "What Happened to ''Burger's Daughter'' or How South African Censorship Works". '''' from the school reading list, along with works by other anti-apartheid writers," Gordimer detractors 'insulting', says Asmal ", News24.com, April 19, 2001. describing ''July's People'' as "deeply racist, superior and patronizing".Anuradha Kumar, " New Boundaries ", ''The Hindu'', 2004 Aug. 1. In South Africa, she joined the , Mosiuoa Lekota , etc.) Throughout these years she also regularly took part in anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa, and traveled internationally speaking out against South African apartheid and discrimination and political repression.Per Wästberg, Nadine Gordimer and the South African Experience , April 26, 2001. (Nobel Prize article.) Her works began achieving literary recognition early in her career, with her first international recognition in 1961, followed by numerous literary awards throughout the ensuing decades. Literary recognition for her accomplishments culminated with the Nobel Prize For Literature in 1991, which noted that Gordimer "through her magnificent epic writing has — in the words of Alfred Nobel — been of very great benefit to humanity". The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991 , Nobel Prize Laureate biography. In the post-apartheid 1990s and 21st century, Gordimer has been active in the HIV/AIDS movement, which is a significant public health crisis in South Africa. In 2004, she organized about 20 major writers to contribute short fiction for '' has done except his stance on AIDS.Agence-France-Presse, Nobel laureates join battle against AIDS , Dec. 1, 2004 Gordimer and literary giants fight AIDS , iafrica.com, 2004 Nov. 29.Nadine Gordimer and Anthony Sampson, Letter to ''The New Review of Books'' , Nov. 16, 2000. Gordimer's activism has not been limited to South Africa. Gordimer's resistance to discrimination extends to her even refusing to accept "shortlisting" in 1998 for the fell ill, Gordimer joined six other Nobel prizewinners in a public letter to the United States warning it not to seek to destabilize Cuba's communist government. A founding member of the Congress Of South African Writers , Gordimer has also been active in South African letters and international literary organizations. She has been Vice President of International PEN , and has served on the steering committee of South Africa's Anti-Censorship Action Group. Gordimer self-identifies as an Atheist .Paris Review, http://www.parisreview.com/media/3060_GORDIMER.pdf . WORK AND THEMES Gordimer has achieved lasting international recognition for her works, most of which deal with political issues, as well as the moral and psychological tensions of her racially divided home country. Virtually all of Gordimer's works deal with themes of love and politics, particularly concerning race in South Africa. Always questioning power relations and truth, Gordimer tells stories of ordinary people, revealing moral ambiguities and choices. Her characterization is nuanced, revealed more through the choices her characters make than through their claimed identities and beliefs. Her first published novel, ''The Lying Days'' (1953), takes place in Gordimer's home town of Springs, Transvaal, an East Rand mining town near Johannesburg . Arguably a semi-autobiographical work, ''The Lying Days'' is a Bildungsroman , charting the growing political awareness of a young white woman, Helen, toward small-town life and South African racial division.Judith Norman, " Special Commissioned Essay on ''The Lying Days'' ". In her 1963 work, ''Occasion for Loving'', Gordimer puts apartheid and love squarely together. Her protagonist, Ann Davis, is married to Boaz Davis, an ethnomusicologist, but in love with Gideon Shibalo, an artist with several failed relationships. Ann Davis is white, however, and Gideon Shibalo is black, and South Africa's government criminalised such relationships. Gordimer won the 's ''The Story of an African Farm'' (1883) and J. M. Coetzee 's ''In the Heart of the Country'' (1977), the "conservationist" seeks to conserve nature to preserve the apartheid system, keeping change at bay. When an unidentified corpse is found on his farm, Mehring does the "right thing" by providing it a proper burial; but the dead person haunts the work, a reminder of the bodies on which Mehring's vision would be built. Gordimer's 1979 novel '' Burger's Daughter '' is the story of a woman analyzing her relationship with her father, a martyr to the anti-apartheid movement. The child of two Communist and anti-apartheid revolutionaries, Rosa Burger finds herself drawn into political activism as well. Written in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising , the novel was shortly thereafter banned by the South African government. Gordimer described the novel as a "coded homage" to Bram Fischer , the lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists. Brief biography of Bram Fischer , Bram Fischer Human Rights Programme, Wits School of Law (2005; last visited 2007/4/4). In '' July's People '' (1981), Gordimer imagines a bloody South African revolution, in which white people are hunted and murdered after black people begin a revolution against the apartheid government. The work follows Maureen and Bamford Smales, an educated white couple, hiding for their lives with July, their long-time former servant. The novel plays off the various groups of "July's people": his family and his village, as well as the Smales. The story examines how people cope with the terrible choices forced on them by violence, race hatred, and the state. ''The House Gun'' (1998) was Gordimer's second post-apartheid novel. It follows the story of a couple, Claudia and Harald Lingard, dealing with their son Duncan's murder of one of his housemates. The novel treats the rising crime rate in South Africa and the guns that virtually all households have, as well as the legacy of South African apartheid and the couple's concerns about their son's lawyer, who is black. The novel was optioned for film rights to Granada Productions.Dwight Garner and Nadine Gordimer, " The Salon Interview: Nadine Gordimer , March 1998.Bookreporter.com, [http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides/house_gun.asp ReadingGroup Guide, ''The House Gun'' by Nadine Gordimer.David Medalie, "'The Context of the Awful Event': Nadine Gordimer's ''The House Gun''", ''Journal of South African Studies'', v.25, n.4 (Dec. 1999), pp. 633-644. Gordimer's award-winning 2002 novel, '', " Awakening " (review of ''The Pickup'' and ''Loot and Other Stories''), ''The New York Review of Books'', v.50, n. 16 (Oct. 23, 2003).Sue Kossew, " Review of Nadine Gordimer, ''The Pickup'' ", ''Quodlibet'', v.1, Feb. 2005.Penguin Book Clubs/Reading Guides, Nadine Gordimer's ''The Pickup'' .Anthony York, " ''The Pickup'' by Nadine Gordimer " (book review), Salon.com, Dec. 6, 2001. Gordimer's recent novel, '' Get A Life '', written in 2005 after the death of her longtime spouse, Reinhold Cassirer, is the story of a man undergoing treatment for a life-threatening disease. While clearly drawn from recent personal life experiences, the novel also continues Gordimer's exploration of political themes. The protagonist is an ecologist, battling installation of a planned nuclear plant. But he is at the same time undergoing radiation therapy for his cancer, causing him personal grief and, ironically, rendering him a nuclear health hazard in his own home. Here, Gordimer again pursues the questions of how to integrate everyday life and poltical activism.Donald Morrison, Nadine Gordimer , ''Time Magazine'': 60 Years of Heroes (2006). BIOGRAPHY BY ROBERTS Ronald Suresh Roberts published a biography of Gordimer, ''No Cold Kitchen'', in 2006. Gordimer had granted Roberts interviews and access to her personal papers, with an understanding that she would authorize the biography in return for a right to review the manuscript before publication. However, Gordimer and Roberts failed to reach an agreement over his account of the the illness and death of Gordimer's husband Reinhold Cassirer and an affair Gordimer had in the 50s, as well as criticism of her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Roberts published independently, not as "authorized", and Gordimer disavowed the book, accusing Roberts of breach of trust. In addition to those disagreements, Roberts critiques Gordimer's post-apartheid advocacy on behalf of black South Africans, in particular her opposition to the government's handling of the AIDS crisis, as a paternalistic and hypocritical white liberalism. The biography also revealed that Gordimer's 1954 '' New Yorker '' essay, ''A South African Childhood'', was not wholly biographical and contained some fabricated events. BIBLIOGRAPHY ;Fiction
;Short story collections
;Plays
;Essays
;Other works
;Adaptations of Gordimer's works
;Edited works
HONORS
FURTHER READING Brief biographies
Critical studies
Short reviews Speeches and interviews
Biographies
Research archives
REFERENCES
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