Nadine Gordimer

Born in an East Rand mining town on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, writer and political activist Nadine Gordimer grew up surrounded by the realities of apartheid. Gordimer was educated at a parochial school for girls, but spent much of her childhood largely homebound due to her mother's concerns about her health. The isolating nature of her homebound life catalyzed Gordimer to write at an early age, and she published her first short story "The Quest for Seen Gold" at the age of 15, and it appeared in the Children's Sunday Express. For a year Gordimer studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, but chose not to complete her degree, opting instead to move to Joannesburg and continue to write. The publication of Gordimer's story "A Watcher of the Dead" by The New Yorker in 1948 brought Gordimer's work to a large audience in the literary fiction realm. Gordimer believed that the short story was the literary form for her time, and continued to publish widely, both in the New Yorker and in other high-profile publications. Gordimer's first novel The Lying Days was published in 1953. In 1960, spurred by the arrest of her best friend, Gordimer entered the anti-apartheid movement as an activist. She became a staple figure in South African politics and a close friend of the attorneys who defended Nelson Mandela during his trial in 1962, and also helped him to edit his speech "I Am Prepared to Die." Throughout the '60s and '70s, Gordimer remained based in Johannesburg although she traveled to the United States regularly for teaching engagements at various universities. Though she had begun to achieve international acclaim for her literary work, she remained committed to the cause of governmental reforms in South Africa that would end apartheid. The government's response was to ban several of Gordimer's works, including The Late Bourgeois World, which was banned for a decade, and A World of Strangers, which was banned for 12 years. The banning was protested by major literary and political figures. Gordimer herself was an outspoken critic against censorship and the governmental management of citizen access to information as well as the arts and literature. She also became involved in the fight against AIDS during the 1990s, addressing South African citizens about the disease, which had become a public health crisis in the country. In 1991 Gordimer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, a recognition that noted that Alfred Nobel had referred to her work as "a very great benefit to humanity." Gordimer's activism continued in the post-apartheid '90s and into the 21st century. She spoke out against discrimination in all of its forms on the lecture circuit and with her actions, which included refusing to accept "shortlisting" in 1998 for the Orange Prize, an award that recognizes only the achievements of female writers. Gordimer was married twice, first in 1949 to Gerald Gavron, a local dentist. The couple had one child, a daughter called Oriane. Following their divorce in 1952, Gordimer married Reinhold Cassirer, a highly respected art dealer. The couple had one son, Hugo. Trinidadian biographer Ronald Suresh Roberts approached Gordimer about a biography and she agreed to allow him to write it, on the condition that she be given final review of the manuscript. When she read the completed work, Gordimer had several objections to Roberts' account of her life and refused to authorize it and the attached publishers quickly withdrew from the project. Gordimer died in Johannesburg in her sleep in July 2014, at the age of 90.