The Art of Fiction No. 77
“When I was twelve
. . . I'd write little book reviews. There was a review of . . . Pepys's Diary . . . and I didn’t see that there was any difference between [the kids’ books I read at the time] and . . . Pepys's Diary.”
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer was born in Springs, in South Africa’s Guateng province. She was the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, the French Legion of Honor in 2007, and the Booker Prize for her novel The Conservationist (1974). In both fiction and nonfiction, Gordimer portrays life in apartheid South Africa to a global audience, painting intimate portraits of individuals against the backdrop of greater social and racial conflict. Gordimer herself was a member of the African National Congress during apartheid, and several of her novels were banned as a result of government censorship. Her notable works include Face to Face (1949), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), Burger’s Daughter (1979), July’s People (1981), and Telling Times: Writing and Living, 1954-2008 (2010).
Photograph courtesy of the author and Farrar, Straus & Giroux