Who is Nadine Gordimer's mother?
Nadine Gordimer’s mother, Nan Myers, was born in England to an established Anglo-Jewish family and came to South Africa with her parents when she was six years old. Despite her father’s traditionally Orthodox upbringing in Latvia, there was no attempt to provide any kind of Jewish education in the family home in South Africa.
Where did Winnie Gordimer live in South Africa?
Gordimer was born near Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. Her father, Isidore Gordimer, was a Jewish immigrant watchmaker from Žagarė (then Russian Empire, now Lithuania ), and her mother, Hannah "Nan" (Myers) Gordimer, was from London.
Why did Nadine Gordimer win the Nobel Prize?
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive. Prize motivation: “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, South Africa. Her parents were Jewish immigrants; her father was from Latvia and her mother was from England.
What is the family background of Nelly Gordimer?
Personal life. Gordimer was born near Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. Her father, Isidore Gordimer, was a Jewish immigrant watchmaker from Žagarė (then Russian Empire, now Lithuania), and her mother, Hannah "Nan" (Myers) Gordimer, was from London.
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Where did Nadine Gordimer grow up?
Springs, South AfricaNadine Gordimer was born in Springs, South Africa. Her parents were Jewish immigrants; her father was from Latvia and her mother was from England. Gordimer began writing at the age of nine, and was just 15 years old when her first work was published.
When was Nadine Gordimer born?
November 20, 1923Nadine Gordimer / Date of birthNadine Gordimer, (born November 20, 1923, Springs, Transvaal [now in Gauteng], South Africa—died July 13, 2014, Johannesburg), South African novelist and short-story writer whose major theme was exile and alienation.
Is Nadine Gordimer still alive?
July 13, 2014Nadine Gordimer / Date of death
How many children did Nadine Gordimer have?
two childrenGordimer married art dealer Reinhold Cassirer in 1954; he died in 2001. Gordimer is survived by her two children, Hugo and Oriane Ophelia. Nadine Gordimer died in her sleep in her Johannesburg home on 13 July 2014.
How do you pronounce Nadine Gordimer?
Phonetic spelling of Nadine Gordimer. Na-dine Gordimer. ... Meanings for Nadine Gordimer. Nadine Gordimer is a prominent writer from South Africa who is well recognized for her works. ... Synonyms for Nadine Gordimer. author. ... Examples of in a sentence. ... Translations of Nadine Gordimer.
What apartheid means in English?
racial segregationDefinition of apartheid 1 : racial segregation specifically : a former policy of segregation and political, social, and economic discrimination against the nonwhite majority in the Republic of South Africa.
Why did Nadine Gordimer win the Nobel Prize?
Gordimer won South Africa's first Nobel Prize in literature in 1991 for chronicling the apartheid regime's oppression, illustrating in detail the day-to-day prejudice blacks endured at the hands of white South Africans and the South African government.
Who wrote about apartheid?
Alan PatonOccupationauthor anti-apartheid activistLanguageEnglishNotable worksCry, the Beloved Country; Too Late the PhalaropeSpouseDorrie Francis Lusted, 1928–1967 Anne Hopkins, 1969–his death5 more rows
How did Nadine Gordimer fight apartheid?
Under the harsh apartheid regime, Gordimer hid stowaways, helped people across the border, passed messages, and assisted those trying to evade the police. She worked tirelessly to free Nelson Mendela from prison, and the two maintained a close relationship until his death.
What is Gordimer's purpose in writing once upon a time?
Gordimer experienced the apartheid system in South Africa firsthand and uses "Once Upon a Time" to express the fear and anxiety she and others felt during that violent period. Gordimer's theme is likely a statement against the fear, cruelty and social injustices associated with racial segregation.
What is the theme of the short story once upon a time?
Wealth Inequality and Fear Set in the 1980s in apartheid South Africa, Nadine Gordimer's “Once Upon a Time” shows how societies with tremendous wealth inequality are doomed to fail.
When was apartheid ended?
1994Apartheid, the Afrikaans name given by the white-ruled South Africa's Nationalist Party in 1948 to the country's harsh, institutionalized system of racial segregation, came to an end in the early 1990s in a series of steps that led to the formation of a democratic government in 1994.
Why did Nadine Gordimer win the Nobel Prize?
Gordimer won South Africa's first Nobel Prize in literature in 1991 for chronicling the apartheid regime's oppression, illustrating in detail the day-to-day prejudice blacks endured at the hands of white South Africans and the South African government.
When was the novel My son's story first published?
1990My Son's Story is the ninth novel by South African novelist Nadine Gordimer. It was written towards the end of the State of Emergency and first published in 1990....My Son's Story.First editionAuthorNadine GordimerPublisherFarrar, Straus and GirouxPublication date1990Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)3 more rows
When did Nadine Gordimer won a Nobel Prize?
1991The Swedish Academy has decided to award the Nobel Prize for Literature for 1991 to Nadine Gordimer. She is a South African, her mother English, her father Lithuanian. Her work comprises novels and short stories in which the consequences of apartheid form the central theme. She was born in 1923.
Who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982?
Gabriel García MárquezWith this year's Nobel Prize in Literature to the Colombian writer, Gabriel García Márquez, the Swedish Academy cannot be said to bring forward an unknown writer. García Márquez achieved unusual international success as a writer with his novel in 1967 (One Hundred Years of Solitude).
Life
Nadine Gordimer was born in Springs, South Africa. Her parents were Jewish immigrants; her father was from Latvia and her mother was from England. Nadine began writing at the age of nine, and was just 15 years old when her first work was published. The novel entitled The Conservationist (1974) gave her international breakthrough.
Work
Nadine Gordimer's works include novels, short stories, and essays. During the 1960s and 1970s she wrote a number of novels set against the backdrop of the emerging resistance movement against apartheid, while the liberated South Africa provides the backdrop for her later works, written in the 1990s.
Nobel Prizes 2021
Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2021, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
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Where was Nadine Gordimer born?
Nadine Gordimer was born in Springs, Transvaal, South Africa in 1923. She remained in South Africa, living in Johannesburg from 1948 onwards. She was educated at a convent school and spent a year at Witwaterstrand University. Since then, her life was devoted to her writing. She travelled extensively, wrote non-fiction on South African subjects ...
What was Nadine Gordimer's subject matter?
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.
Why is Nadine Gordimer unfair?
This is unfair. You are not denied a voice and a perspective simply because you have not suffered for your skin colour. Furthermore, this form of criticism negates Gordimer’s position as a staunch defender of a free South Africa, and of her right to be a literary witness to her country’s tragedies. Some it would seem are frustrated that the writing career of Nadine Gordimer has outlived Apartheid. In the mid-1990s several critics questioned whether there was a place for her after the fall of the regime. These were the sort of people who saw her as a ‘protest’ writer, whose work was done the moment Nelson Mandela was elected. This is an absurd attempt to reduce Gordimer as a writer. Gordimer has, with great wit, skill, and formal control, explored the attenuation of morality in political systems which distort human interaction. Her work explores intimacies, the depths of yearning, the multiple betrayals of human relationship, and the many ways people learn to cope in a world which has lost its head. She has always been more than a purveyor of fictional objections to the many distortions of repressive governments. In her recent fiction she has demonstrated that her powers are undiminished. She is more than able to meet the challenges of documenting a troubled post-Apartheid society. In The Pickup (2001), a chance encounter between the privileged daughter of an investment banker and a mechanic from an unnamed Arab-African state allows the author to examine immigration, cultural conflict and – an ever-popular Gordimer theme – redemption. The House Gun (1998) deals with the emotional and legal consequences of a murder committed by the son of elite white parents; it examines the bonds of familial love, and asks whether they are capable of withstanding even the most powerful of tests. These novels recall July’s People (1981), one of Gordimer’s finest works, in which a family of white liberals flee a violence stricken Johannesburg for the country, where they seek refuge with their African servant. They are also reminiscent of the Burger’s Daughter (1979), written during the aftermath of the Soweto uprising, in which a daughter examines her relationship with her father, one of the many martyrs to the anti-Apartheid movement.
What is the work of Gordimer?
Gordimer has, with great wit, skill, and formal control, explored the attenuation of morality in political systems which distort human interaction. Her work explores intimacies, the depths of yearning, the multiple betrayals of human relationship, and the many ways people learn to cope in a world which has lost its head.
What is Gordimer's role in South Africa?
Like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, Gordimer is adept at delineating the relationship between the personal and the political. In her long career she has charted each stage of South Africa’s history with a daring refusal to compromise. She deals with the problem of belonging in a segregated society.
Was Gordimer a protest writer?
In the mid-1990s several critics questioned whether there was a place for her after the fall of the regime. These were the sort of people who saw her as a ‘protest’ writer, whose work was done the moment Nelson Mandela was elected. This is an absurd attempt to reduce Gordimer as a writer.
Did Nadine Gordimer outlive apartheid?
Furthermore, this form of criticism negates Gordimer’s position as a staunch defender of a free South Africa, and of her right to be a literary witness to her country’s tragedies. Some it would seem are frustrated that the writing career of Nadine Gordimer has outlived Apartheid.
Where is Nadine Gordimer from?
Nadine Gordimer was born on November 20, 1923, in Springs, a gold-mining town east of Johannesburg, South Africa . Her father, Isidore Gordimer, came to South Africa from Riga, Latvia, at the age of thirteen. Having left school when he was eleven years old, he had learned the trade of watchmaking, and when he arrived in South Africa he at first made his living traveling to the different gold mines fixing watches and at a later stage opened a jewelry shop. Nadine Gordimer’s mother, Nan Myers, was born in England to an established Anglo-Jewish family and had come to South Africa with her parents when she was six years old.
Why was Nadine Gordimer removed from school?
Nadine Gordimer had an unusual childhood in that she was removed from her school, the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in Springs, by her mother because of a supposed heart ailment and spent the years between eleven and sixteen mainly isolated from her peers.
How did Nadine Gordimer help the AIDS crisis?
When studying at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1945, she began exploring the black townships around Johannesburg, which led her to both black literature and the fight for equality. She became active in the African National Congress and wrote about apartheid’s impacts in her fiction, beginning with her first short story collection Face to Face (1949). Gordimer dedicated the later years of her life to the AIDS crisis, creating an anthology, Telling Tales, to raise money for prevention and treatment programs.
When did Gordimer die?
Gordimer died in Johannesburg, South Africa, on July 13, 2014.
What is Gordimer's work about?
Through her writing she reveals the prejudices and ideologies, the tensions and stresses of life in a racially divided society and the corrupting and corrosive effects of the apartheid system.
Who is the author of History from the Inside?
Clingman, S. History from the Inside: The Novels of Nadine Gordimer. London: Ullen and Unwin, 1986.
Who understood Gordimer's work as history from the inside?
Contemporary literary critic, professor, and scholar of South African literature Stephen Clingman’s key framework (1986), via Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukacs, understood Gordimer’s novels as “history from the inside,” as texts that mirror and construct the changing tides of South African history by typifying South Africa through a lens both bigger and smaller than its subject.
Biographical
B orn in Springs, South Africa, 20/11/1923. Daughter of Isidore and Nan Gordimer. Has lived all her life, and continues to live, in South Africa.
Nobel Prizes 2021
Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2021, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
Explore prizes and laureates
Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.
Nobel Prizes 2021
Thirteen laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2021, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.
Explore prizes and laureates
Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.
Remembering Nadine Gordimer, a Lioness of Literary Activism
The writer leaves behind profoundly affecting artistic and political legacies — in both her native South Africa and beyond.
Nadine Gordimer, Novelist Who Took On Apartheid, Is Dead at 90
Ms. Gordimer found her themes in the injustices and cruelties of South Africa’s policies of racial division, and she left no quarter of the society unexplored.
Future Imperfect
In Nadine Gordimer’s novel, veterans of the anti-apartheid movement make their way in a new South Africa.
Letters From Johannesburg
A half-century of essays by the Nobel winner Nadine Gordimer, whose major theme of “writing and living” has been opposition to apartheid.
Newly Released
A small group of authors (including a Nobel Prize winner and a couple of perennial best-seller writers) dare to hit the shelves this month.
Patterns of Intimacy
Nadine Gordimer’s new stories revisit the themes of longing, love and loss.
Writing in the Dark
An Israeli novelist reflects on what literature can accomplish in a time of permanent political emergency and personal loss.
