Gordimer, Nadine (1923-2014), a South African writer, won the 1991 Nobel Prize in literature, the first South African author to receive the award. Her novels and short stories portray the impact of South Africa’s restrictive social policies upon individuals and their relationships with one another. She conveys her opposition to racial segregation and injustice in South Africa through precise characterization and irony. Gordimer’s works express her conviction that the life of the individual cannot be separated from the problems of society.
Gordimer’s first published works were collections of short stories, Face to Face (1949) and The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952). Her first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953. She won the Booker Prize, the United Kingdom’s best-known literary award, for her novel The Conservationist (1974). Her other novels include Occasion for Loving (1963), A Guest of Honor (1970), Burger’s Daughter (1979), July’s People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Son’s Story (1990), None to Accompany Me (1994), The Pickup (2001), and Get a Life (2005). Some of her short fiction was collected in Loot (2003) and Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black (2007). Much of her nonfiction was collected in Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008 (2010). Gordimer was born on Nov. 20, 1923, in Springs, a mining town near Johannesburg. She died on July 13, 2014.
