Nadine Gordimer

On 13 July 2014, South African writer, political activist and Nobel Prize laureate Nadine Gordimer died in her sleep at the age of 90. She was recognized by the Nobel Prize Committee as a writer "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 20 November 1923 in the small East Rand mining town of Springs, the daughter of Jewish immigrants. She published her first story - Come Again Tomorrow - in a Johannesburg magazine at just 15 years of age.

In her novels and short stories she wrote about people who lived under the pressures created by the prevailing structures of power. The consequences of apartheid, exile and alienation were the major themes.  A number of Gordimer's books were banned by the South African government under the apartheid regime,  including The Late Bourgeois World  (1966) and Burger's Daughter (1979).

Nadine Gordimer was a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC) and fought for the release of Nelson Mandela. In the post-apartheid 1990s and 21st century, she was also active in the HIV/AIDS movement.

(Source: Wikipedia and in memoriam ASC Leiden)

Selected publications

About Nadine Gordimer

No cold kitchen : a biography of Nadine Gordimer / Ronald Suresh Roberts. - Johannesburg : STE Publishers, 2005

Nadine Gordimer : la femme, la politique et le roman / Denise Brahimi. - Paris [etc.] : Karthala [etc.], 2000

Nadine Gordimer revisited / Barbara Temple-Thurston. - New York : Twayne Publishers, cop. 1999

Conversations with Nadine Gordimer / Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bzain, Marilyn Dallman Seymour. - Jackson, Miss. [etc.] : University Press of Mississippi, cop. 1990

Works by Nadine Gordimer

No time like the present / Nadine Gordimer.- London [etc.] : Bloomsbury, 2012

Get a life / Nadine Gordimer. - London : Bloomsbury, 2005

Burger's daughter / Nadine Gordimer. - London : Cape, 1979

The conservationist / Nadine Gordimer. - London : Cape, 1974

The late bourgeois world / Nadine Gordimer. - London : Gollancz, 1966

For more publications see the ASCL Library Catalogue

Interview with the 1991 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Nadine Gordimer, by freelance journalist Simon Stanford, 26 April 2005.
Nadine Gordimer talks about her childhood in South Africa; how she became aware of the racism around her (7:01); her first novel and the development of her writing (13:02); changes in South African society (20:10); the anthology ‘Telling Tales’ (25:50); and receiving the Nobel Prize (30:32).

Awards recieved by Nadine Gordimer, via Wikidata and Scholia