NADINE /
GORDIMER
SOUTH AFRICA
ProsE
adine Gordimer was born in 1923 in South Africa. “Read, read, read!”
she constantly repeats and tells of the worlds that were opened up to her as a child in the library in Springs, a small mining town east of Johannesburg. As a 14-year old, she pu- blished her first collection of short stories.
When she received the Nobel Prize for Lite- rature in 1991, she was the first South African, the second African and the seventh female writer to be so honoured. By that time, she had published ten novels, 13 collections of short sto- ries and a great number of essays and articles.
Most of her writing has been characterized by the fight against apartheid. Epic works like The Conservationist, Burger’s Daughter and July’s People weave together the official aspect of life with the personal in bravely revealing des- criptions of aggression and oppression. But it was not just what she wrote, but also her politi- cal activity that played an important role on the long journey to freedom from the country’s re- pressive past. Her home was the venue of many secret political meetings and discussions.
When the apartheid regime ended, a new life began for Gordimer as a writer. In her la- test novel, her fourteenth, Get a Life, which was published in Sweden in 2006, she tells on several symbolic levels of people who reconsi- der their lives after revolutionary change and how they choose different paths to deal with the situation. Intertwined with this is severe criti- cism of civilization.
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NADINE GORDIMER, South AfricAn nobel Prize lAureAte AttrActed the lArgeSt Audience to the AfricA StAnd. She mAde An APPeArAnce together with writer And SwediSh AcAdemy member Per wäStberg.
