Nadine Gordimer
Nadine Gordimer was the first South African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature which she won in 1991.
Books by Nadine Gordimer
“A World of Strangers is Gordimer’s best novel. It’s reminiscent of EM Forster’s Passage to India – it is written in a very British mode…In some ways the book is about what happens to people when they come to a big city and how South African black people – who were 98% rural at the beginning of the 20th century – become urbanised, semi-residents of the city, where they had to have a pass and exist on sufferance at all times.” Read more...
The Best South African Fiction
Imraan Coovadia, Novelist
“If you read her books and you know the history, I think that Nadine’s books are quite closely pegged to real events in Johannesburg and South Africa. And they’re always seen from the position of a white sympathiser – there’s one in every book. Quite often she’s written black characters, but the idea that she’s an African writer, that she has penetrated the African consciousness, it’s not possible…The protagonist is a good man trying to do good things – a businessman who owns a farm he runs as a sort of hobby. But the sense is that your priorities are not necessarily the priorities of the land or the people that you find yourself in. That’s what makes it a very good book.” Read more...
The best books on Being White in Africa
Justin Cartwright, Novelist
Interviews where books by Nadine Gordimer were recommended
The best books on Being White in Africa, recommended by Justin Cartwright
The award-winning novelist thinks Africans want to know how it is that white men have got their hands on all the money. He picks five books on what it means and meant to be white in Africa
The Best South African Fiction, recommended by Imraan Coovadia
The South African novelist gives us an unvarnished view of the writer’s life, and explains how literature told the story of apartheid and why comedy is the easiest way to talk about race
