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| 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.
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