Nadine Gordimer was one of Africa’s most successful authors and the first South African to win a Nobel Prize for literature in 1991. As an anti-apartheid stalwart her writings tackled the injustices of a racially divided state, which resulted in many of her books being serially banned by the Apartheid regime.
Over the course of her literary career, which spanned more than six decades, Nadine Gordimer wrote many short stories and more than 30 books, including the award-winning novel, The Pick-Up and The Conservationist for which she won the Booker Prize — one of literature’s most prestigious awards. She also helped Mandela edit his famous “I am Prepared to Die” speech, given from the defendant’s dock after his sentencing in 1964.
Here are some of her best reads:
The Lying Days
Published in 1953, Nadine Gordimer’s first novel was largely based on her own life. The Lying Days is set in her hometown of Springs. She tells the story of Helen Shaw, a white middle-class girl born into a racially divided country. The Lying Days depicts Helen’s adolescent journey as the realities of her country and class dawns on her. Interested in the space where the political and the emotional interact, the events she witnesses and her relationship with a man who is fighting against the National Party and their policy of racial oppression shapes into the woman she is today.
July’s People (winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature category in 1991)
Written before the end of apartheid-era in 1981, this book was initially banned in South Africa. The plot is set during a fictional black revolt and tells the story of “July’s People”. July is the servant of white liberal family, the Smales, who become the refugees of a white supremacist regime. The Smales are forced to flee from the Johannesburg home as a civil war erupts between blacks and whites and July assumes the role as their refuge. The roles of servant and master slowly transform, as the Smales family learns to adapt to rural lifestyle of their former servant in his native village.
An Occasion for Loving
First published in 1963, this novel centres on two white liberal couples – the Stilwells and Davis’. Set against the background of South Africa in the sixties, the couples do not agree with South African apartheid and live their life as though the colour barrier don’t exist. Their liberal views come into question when Ann Davis, falls in love and starts an affair with a black friend of the Stilwells, Gideon Shibalo. In the era of apartheid when cross-racial relationships were banned and severely punishable, An Occasion for Loving tells the tale of how absurd laws bring a halt to friendships and love.
Burger’s Daughter
Burger’s Daughter tells the story of Rosa Burger, daughter of Lionel Burger a white celebrated anti-apartheid activist and member of the South African Communist Party (SACP). After losing both her parents to the apartheid struggle, we share the plight of a young Rosa who attempts to come to terms with the legacy of her father while trying to discover her own identity. Set in the sixties and seventies, Burger’s Daughter references actual events and people from the apartheid era, including Nelson Mandela and the 1976 Soweto uprising.
A Sport of Nature
This novel follows the story of Hellela, a young Jewish girl who is abandoned by her parents and raised by her aunts. Hellela’s childhood is marked by a series of transgressions and after she is discovered sharing her cousin’s bed, she has to leave home. Drifting from place to place and man to man, A Sport of Nature follows her life journey from self-absorbed adolescence to wife of a revolutionary African president and active member of Black Nationalist movements.
Nadine Gordimer passed away peacefully in her Johannesburg home on 14 July 2014.
