© Opale

Nadine GORDIMER

Nobel Prize 1991

 

"...who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity"

 

Nadine Gordimer was born on the 20th of November 1923 in South Africa, in the town of Alice Springs, a small mining town about 50 km from Johannesburg. Her parents were Jewish immigrants. Her mother had come to South Africa from England at the age of six and her father from Lithuania, at the age of 13. Nadine was educated at Catholic school all through her childhood and adolescence. She became interested in writing very quickly and began to write from the age of nine.

In 1937 her first work, a fable, appeared in the youth section of the Sunday Express, a Johannesburg newspaper, and in November 1939 she published her first story. During the war years she lived in Springs, without harboring any great literary ambitions. She talked about the importance of sex in this period of her life and considered it a positive trait of her existence. She also profited from extensive reading during this time. In 1946 she entered the University of Johannesburg. She left at the end of a year, without her degree, but discovered a great interest in the world of literature and the world of publishing.

In 1948-1949 she published stories which appeared in both America and in England. From this point on she would be able to earn a living for herself and her young daughter. In 1950 she moved definitively to Johannesburg. Three years later, she published her first novel in London and New York, The Lying Days, inspired by her youth. In this novel she describes the life of Helen, a young white girl belonging to the dominant minority in a narrow-minded small town where blacks are permanently discriminated against.
During these years, Gordimer became a partisan of liberal humanism, and looked for a common point where whites and blacks could meet for
“talking, drinking and dancing.” By the end of the decade she had become interested and impressed by the development of African nationalism.

In 1957 she housed the President of the African National Congress, the black leader Albert Lutuli, whilst he was freed on bail. In 1960, he became the first South African to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Nadine Gordimer was very close to Nelson Mandela’s ANC. She wrote A World of Strangers which was refused by Penguin Publishing under the pretext that the novel attacked the racial politics of the republic. Nadine Gordimer wrote Occasion for Loving when the massacre of Sharpeville occurred in 1960. This book tells the story of an illicit relationship between a black man and a white woman, who are both married.

Her earliest novels such as The Late Bourgeois World (1966) study the master slave relationship established by apartheid. Throughout her work, Nadine Gordimer continues to show that the domination of white over black and the primacy of man over woman are interlinked both from a spiritual and a sexual point of view. From 1963 when a law on publications and performances was passed, Gordimer spent much time combating censorship. She supported the action taken by the black writer and journalist Nat Nakasa who founded the review The Classic. He committed suicide in 1966 in the United States. The same year, Gordimer was present at the trial of Bram Fisher, a white member of the Communist Party of South Africa. This character who fascinated her would inspire Burger’s Daughter.

At the end of the 60’s, she collaborated in the anti-apartheid activities of the National Union of South African students and A Guest of Honour illustrates how Gordimer broke away from the clichés of interracial love that remained one of her favorite themes.

In 1974 she won the Booker Prize, the most important English literature prize for The Conservationist, which juxtaposed the different worlds of a white manufacturer and Zulu mythology. The following year, a collection of her short stories, Selected Stories written over the thirty previous years was published, with a preface in which she stated that she no longer believed in the specific solitude of an intellectual woman.

She would refuse to accept the title of “Woman of the Year “ in 1976, as she believed that after the Soweto riots, this title should be given to Winnie Mandela who intervened between the police and the students, or to one of the woman from the ghetto who marched through the demonstration with the children. Burger’s Daughter was banned by the censure committee. The novelist then began to receive letters of support from all over the world: the ban was lifted. In this novel a girl analyses his relationship with his father who is a martyr for the anti –apartheid movement. The following year Gordimer received the CAN award (Central News Agency) for this novel. On the occasion of the awards ceremony, she gave an aggressive and ironic speech that was badly taken by some of the authorities.

After the appearance of the collection of short stories A Soldier’s Embrace in 1980, July’s People appeared in 1981. This futuristic novel tells the story of a family who are fleeing from Johannesburg and who take refuge with their African servants in a village. Some months later, Gordimer went to Botswana and presented the themes of the engagement of a writer.

In 1985 she won prizes in Italy and in RFA, and the following year, the Benett award in the United States. A Sport of Nature came out in 1987. This was an enigmatic, ironic novel that engaged with the independence movements in African countries, and which tells the story of a young white woman and her rapport with blacks in Africa.

The history of South Africa changed radically between 1989 and 1991 when the majority of apartheid laws were abolished under the government of Frederik de Klerk. After 4 years of negotiations, the first multiethnic elections took place in 1994, and Nelson Mandela was elected. He would be the first black President of the Republic of South Africa.

In 1991 Nadine Gordimer received the CAN Award for My Son’s Story, and she also won the Nobel Prize for literature, declaring “My nobel prize belongs to all Africans.” In 1994 she gave lectures that would be published in writing and No one To Accompany Me was be published. In 1998 Nadine Gordimer published the The House Gun. Her husband Reinhold died, and her collection of stories Pillage, was dedicated to him.

In 2002 The Pickup was translated into French. It is the story of Julie who is the daughter of rich white South Africans. She lives in rebellion against her background, in a bohemian environment. She falls in love with a young black man Abdou, an illegal immigrant mechanic. This story unravels to the point where Abdou is expulsed and Julie decides to follow him.

In October 2006 Grodimer was the victim of a burglary. The burglars locked her up in a storeroom but did not injure her. She received the French Legion of Honour in March 2007.

She has remained all her life in Johannesburg, but her daughter lives in Paris.

Her last novel Get a Life appeared in France in June 2007. Through the intimate portrait of a languishing family who find renewal through different means. Gordimer, at the age of 83, develops three themes that are of particular importance to her: nuclear peril, the threat to the environment and the plague of HIV/AIDS.