Nadine Gordimer

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Standard Name: Gordimer, Nadine
Birth Name: Nadine Gordimer
NG was a South African novelist and short-story writer who bore witness in her work first to the struggle against apartheid, then to the problems and challenges of building an interracial nation. She is widely honoured for her political ideals and integrity. Her topics included the effects of political structures on people (apartheid with its discriminatory labour and strike laws), relations across the colour line, family issues like teenage pregnancy and friction between mother and daughter, and the cultural predicaments left by colonialism.
Colour photo of Nadine Gordimer. Her grey hair is brushed back; her lined face has an impish smile. She is wearing an open-necked shirt which is checked in various colours and styles, with stud earrings and a Swedish flag lapel pin.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Margaret Atwood
In 2007 she contributed (along with Nadine Gordimer , Toni Morrison , Amy Tan , and others) to The Alphabet of Hope, an anthology in support of worldwide literacy put out by UNESCO .
Borne Back Daily.
8 September 2015
Education Anna Livia
The school is located near the South African border; it was attended by the sons of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela during Apartheid. Nadine Gordimer 's son Hugo Cassirer was also a student there. Anna...
Occupation Margaret Atwood
Later, in 1982-3, MA was President of the Writers' Union of Canada . She was President of the Canadian branch of PEN International in 1984-6. She became a Vice-President of Pen International on 11 July...
Occupation Elizabeth Jane Howard
EJH 's assignments in 1974 included, as well as the Rose Kennedy interview, acting as one of the three judges of the Booker Prize. (Another judge this year was A. S. Byatt .) Howard received...
politics Mary Renault
Initially her political views coincided with those of another novelist, Nadine Gordimer , and both supported anti-censorship efforts in the Johannesburg PEN International Centre . Later Gordimer supported the African National Congress and the development...
Publishing A. S. Byatt
She thought of the title and the central idea for the novel in the British Library, watching that great Coleridge scholar, Kathleen Coburn , and thinking of the poet possessing his critic, and of the...
Publishing Elspeth Huxley
In the USAJohn Willey of Morrow made an error of judgement in supposing the book was, in American terms, a specialist, small-sale one. He agreed to take 2,500 copies of the British edition, but...
Textual Features Adrienne Rich
When she considers her own status as a white woman, and the inevitable role of this status in shaping her ethical thinking, she concludes that hard-and-fast distinctions must not be drawn: watch the edges that...
Textual Production Bessie Head
Once BH had acquired recognition as a writer, her output expanded to include lectures and academic papers. She supplied enthusiastic forewords to a new edition of Sol Plaatje 's Native Life in South Africa...
Textual Production Sue Townsend
In March 1985 ST was the final speaker at a conference organized by the Children's Book Circle on the marketing of books for children and entitled Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More; she talked...

Timeline

Autumn1984
In London the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures launched a literary magazine Wasafiri: the ATCAL Journal, edited by Susheila Nasta .
1985
Ellen Kuzwayo (1914-2006) published an autobiography, Call Me Woman, which uses the harsh events of her own life to show how the South African system of apartheid bore on women in particular.
27-29 April 1994
The first democratic general election in South Africa made Nelson Mandela the first president of the new, non-apartheid, republic.