Nobel Prize author, Nadine Gordimer, ends her career at 90

theguardian.com

Nobel Prize winning author, Nadine Gordimer, died on July 14, 2014, at 90 years of age in her home in Johannesburg.

Gordimer is best known for her writing on apartheid in South Africa. Although not a political person, she was inclined to comment on the situation around her in terms of equity, justice, freedom, and race – she was more of an ‘accidental’ social historian than a political activist.

Gordimer (1923-2014) grew up in rural Transvaal, after her family migrated from Lithuania. Her father was a watchmaker, and Gordimer’s first career was as the owner of a jewellery store. She also channelled her creative energy into writing, and wrote many novels, short stories, and political essays. Her first novel was Face to Face (1949) but is probably best known for The Conservationist (1974). She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

Three of her books were banned in South Africa during the apartheid years (1948-1994). A World of Strangers (1958) – her second book – was banned for 12 years because it was about a young British male who arrives in South Africa and has two sets of friends, elite Europeans and local Africans of the nearby townships. The Late Bourgeois World (1966) was banned for 10 years about the suicide of a woman’s former husband, who opposes the anti-apartheid movement. Burger’s Daughter (1979) was also banned for a few months. It was a child’s view of apartheid.  She wrote of coexistence between races, mixed-race marriages, and equity for minorities.