Nadine Gordimer

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia/Boberger

Nadine Gordimer is a celebrated South African writer and political activist. She was born on November 20, 1923, outside Johannesburg in the East Rand mining town of Springs. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, and is held in high regard for her handling of moral and racial issues in her writing, especially with regard to the apartheid era and its implications for human rights. She was strongly opposed to apartheid and joined the African National Congress (ANC) at a time when it was banned in South Africa. More recently, she has been involved in several HIV/AIDS awareness and charity causes.

Gordimer started writing at an early age and had her first stories published at the tender age of 15. She studied for a year at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) before moving permanently to Johannesburg, where she continued her writing and was published in a number of local magazines. She went on to be published in a number of prominent literary journals. In 1951, her story A Watcher of the Dead was chosen to feature in the The New Yorker and she has since has several of her works appear in the prestigious publication. Gordimer’s first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953.

She was inspired to become more involved in the apartheid resistance movement in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre and after her friend Bettie du Toit, a political activist and trade unionist, was arrested. She began playing an active role in South African politics and is still friends with icon and former South African president Nelson Mandela. During the struggle, many of Gordimer’s books were banned by the apartheid government, yet she continued to write about the situation and called for South Africa to re-examine its policies and the oppressive treatment of its people. She also testified at the Delmas Treason Trial in 1986 in support of 22 fellow anti-apartheid activists. Gordimer took part in several demonstrations and also gave talks overseas, speaking out against apartheid.

Gordimer has a daughter, Oriane, from her first marriage. She also has a son, Hugo, from her second marriage to art dealer Reinhold Cassirer, who established Sotheby’s in South Africa and passed away in 2001. Hugo works as a filmmaker in New York and has collaborated with his mother on two documentaries.