Nobel Prize for Literature in 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 in Springs, Transvaal, South Africa in 1923. She has remained in South Africa, having lived in Johannesburg since 1948. She was educated at a convent school and spent a year at Witwaterstrand University. Since then, her life has been devoted to her writing. She has travelled extensively, has written non-fiction on South African subjects and made TV documentaries, collaborating with her son Hugo Cassirer on the television film Choosing Justice: Allan Boesak. She was responsible for the script of the 1989 BBC film, Frontiers, and for four of the seven screenplays for a television drama based on her own short stories, entitled The Gordimer Stories 1981-82. She has also published, in forty languages, thirteen novels and ten short story collections.
Her first short story was published at the age of fifteen in the liberal Johannesburg magazine, Forum, and during her twenties, her stories appeared in many local magazines. In 1951 the New Yorker took one of her short stories. Her short story collections include A Soldier's Embrace (1980); Something Out There (1984); and Jump and Other Stories (1991). Loot (2003), is a collection of ten short stories widely varied in theme and place.
Nadine Gordimer's subject matter in the past has been the effect of apartheid on the lives of South Africans and the moral and psychological tensions of life in a racially-divided country, which she often wrote about by focusing on oppressed non-white characters. She was an ardent opponent of apartheid and refused to accommodate the system, despite growing up in a community in which it was accepted as normal. Her work has therefore served to chart, over a number of years, the changing response to apartheid in South Africa. Her first novel, The Lying Days (1953), was based largely on her own life and set in her home town. Her next three novels, A World of Strangers (1958); Occasion for Loving (1963), which focuses on an illicit love affair between a black man and a white woman; and The Late Bourgeois World (1966) deal with master-servant relations in South African life. In 1974, her novel The Conservationist, was joint winner of the Booker Prize for Fiction. Burger's Daughter (1979) was written during the aftermath of the Soweto uprising, and was banned, along with other books she has written. The House Gun (1998), explores, through a murder trial, the complexities of violence-ridden post-apartheid South Africa. The Pickup (2001), is set in South Africa and Saudi Arabia, and its theme is the tragedy of forced emigration. Her latest novel is Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black (2007).
Nadine Gordimer has been awarded fifteen honorary degrees from universites in USA, Belgium, South Africa, and from York, Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the UK. She was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), and is Vice President of International PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was also a founder of the Congress of South African Writers.
In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 2007, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur (France).
NOVELS:
The Lying Days 1953
A World of Strangers 1958
Occasion for Loving 1963
The Late Bourgeois World 1966
A Guest of Honour 1970
The Conservationist 1975
Burger’s Daughter 1979
July’s People 1981
A Sport of Nature 1987
My Son’s Story 1991
None to Accompany Me 1994
The House Gun 1998
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS:
The Soft Voice of the Serpent 1952
Six Feet of the Country 1956
Friday’s Footprint 1960
Not for Publication 1965
Livingstone’s Companions 1971
Selected Stories 1976
Some Monday for Sure (Selected Stories) 1976
A Soldier’s Embrace 1980
Something Out There 1984
Jump 1992
NON-FICTION:
On the Mines (essays to accompany photographs by David Goldblatt)
Lifetimes: Under Apartheid (Text, excerpts from novels and stories, photographs by David Goldblatt)
The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics & Places (essays) 1988
Writing and Being: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1995
LITERARY AWARDS:
W. H. Smith Commonwealth Literary Award 1961 England
James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1972 England
Booker Prize 1974, England
CNA Prize 1974, 1975, 1980, South Africa
Grand Aigle d’Or 1975, France
Modern Language Association Award 1982, USA
Scottish Arts Council Neil M. Gunn Fellowship 1981, Scotland
Premio Malaparte 1985, Italy
Nelly Sachs Prize 1986m, Germany
Bennett Award 1987, USA
Nobel Prize in Literature 1991, Sweden
HONORARY DEGREES:
D. Litt., University of Leuven, Belgium 1981
D. Litt., Smith College, USA 1985
D. Humane Letters, City College, New York University 1985
D. Litt., Harvard University 1986
D. Litt., Yale University 1986
D. Litt., Columbia University 1987
D. Litt., New School for Social Research, New York 1987
D. Litt., York University, England 1987
D. Litt., University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
D. Litt., University of Cape Town, South Africa
D. Litt., University of Cape Town, South Africa
D. Litt., Cambridge University 1991
D. Litt., Oxford University 1994
D. Litt., University of Durban-Westville
D. Litt., Ben Gurion University 1996
HONORARY MEMBER & FELLOWSHIP:
Hon. Member, American Academy of Arts & Science
Hon. Member, American Academy & Institute of Arts & Letters
Fellow, Royal Society of Literature, England
Vice President, PEN International
Patron, Congress of South African Writers
DECORATION:
Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres France
FILMS:
Screenplays for four of the 7 television dramas based on her own short stories, collectively entitled "The Gordimer Stories", 1981-82.
Co-scripted and co-produced "Choosing for Justice: Allan Boesak" with Hugo Cassirer, 1983.
Scripted and narrated a film in the BBC series "Frontiers", 1989, on the subject of the frontier between Mozambique and South Africa.
"Berlin & Johannesburg: The Wall & The Colour Bar", television documentary film in collaboration with Hugo Cassirer.
Source:
Penguin Reading Guides; The Nobel Foundation 1991 ; UNDP South Africa
Biographical Links:
Biography of Nadine Gordimer
Contemporary Authors -- British Council Arts
Nadine Gordimer
Wikipedia
A Biography of Nadine Gordimer
by Mandisi Majavu, Znet, January 15, 2006
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