Search results for ""author nadine gordimer""

Nadine Gordimer's life reflects the true spirit of the writer as moral activist, political visionary and literary icon. Telling Times collects together all her non-fiction for the first time, spanning more than half a century, from the twilight of colonial rule in South Africa, to the long, brutal fight to overthrow South Africa's apartheid regime and to her leadership role over the last 20 years in confronting the dangers of AIDS, globalisation, and ethnic violence. The range of this book is staggering, from Gordimer's first piece in The New Yorker in 1954, in which she autobiographically traces her emergence as a brilliant, young writer in a racist country, to her pioneering role in recognising the greatest African and European writers of her generation, to her truly, courageous stance in supporting Nelson Mandela and other members of the ANC during their years of imprisonment. Given that Gordimer will never write an autobiography, Telling Times is an important document of twentieth-century social and political history, told through the voice of one of its greatest literary figures.

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Never before has Gordimer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, published such a comprehensive collection of her nonfiction. Telling Times represents the full span of her works in that field—from the twilight of white rule in South Africa to the fight to overthrow the apartheid regime, and most recently, her role over the past seven years in confronting the contemporary phenomena of violence and the dangers of HIV. The range of this book is staggering, and the work in totality celebrates the lively perseverance of the life-loving individual in the face of political tumult, then the onslaught of a globalized world. The abiding passionate spirit that informs “A South African Childhood,” a youthful autobiographical piece published in The New Yorker in 1954, can be found in each of the book’s ninety-one pieces that span a period of fifty-five years. Returning to a lifetime of nonfiction work has become an extraordinary experience for Gordimer. She takes from one of her revered great writers, Albert Camus, the conviction that the writer is a “responsible human being” attuned not alone to dedication to the creation of fiction but to the political vortex that inevitably encompasses twentieth- and twenty-first-century life. Born in 1923, Gordimer, who as a child was ambitious to become a ballet dancer, was recognized at fifteen as a writing prodigy. Her sensibility was as much shaped by wide reading as it was to eye-opening sight, passing on her way to school the grim labor compounds where black gold miners lived. These twin decisives—literature and politics—infuse the book, which includes historic accounts of the political atmosphere, firsthand, after the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the Soweto uprising of 1976, as well as incisive close-up portraits of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, among others. Gordimer revisits the eternally relevant legacies of Tolstoy, Proust, and Flaubert, and engages vigorously with contemporaries like Susan Sontag, Octavio Paz, and Edward Said. But some of her most sensuous writing comes in her travelogues, where the politics of Africa blend seamlessly with its awe-inspiring nature—including spectacular recollections of childhood holidays beside South Africa’s coast of the Indian Ocean and a riveting account of her journey the length of the Congo River in the wake of Conrad. Gordimer’s body of work is an extraordinary vision of the world that harks back to the sensibilities—political, moral, and social—of Dickens and Tolstoy, but with a decidedly vivid contemporary consciousness. Telling Times becomes both a literary exploration and extraordinary document of social and political history in our times.

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Throughout her career the internationally renowned South African writer Nadine Gordimer has built a literary reputation with her incisive short stories as much as with her acclaimed novels. Together with her essays, this highly imaginative and committed body of work won her the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. In the opinion of the Academy: ‘Through her magnificent epic writing she has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity.' Gordimer has said that while novelists take the reader by the hand developing ‘a consistency of relationship that does not and cannot convey the quality of human life, where contact is more like the flash of fireflies, in and out, now here, now there, in darkness. Short-story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the only thing one can be sure of - the present moment.' Now, for the first time, the best of her stories are published in one volume.

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Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm. As the upheaval in Mehring's world increasingly resembles that in the country as a whole, it becomes clear that only a seismic shift in ideas and concrete action can avert annihilation.

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A startling new work from a Nobel prize-winning author: ten short stories, each a revelation of our interior lives, each entering unforeseen contexts of our contemporary world. In the title story an earthquake exposes both an ocean bed strewn with treasure among the dead, and the avarice of the town's survivors. In 'The Diamond Mine' a woman remembers her first, passionately erotic experience, hidden, in the company of her parents, with a soldier who may not be alive to remember her. The anopheles mosquito brings death to the saunas and other playgrounds of the developed with in 'The Emissary'. In 'Karma', Gordimer's inventiveness knows no bounds: in five returns to the earthly life, taking on different ages and genders, a disembodied narrator testifies to unfinished business - critically, wittily - and questions the nature of existence.

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In this work, Nadine Gordimer unfolds the story of a young woman's slowly evolving identity in the turbulent political environment of present-day South Africa. Her father's death in prison leaves Rosa Burger alone to explore the intricacies of what it actually means to be Burger's daughter.

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“So flawlessly written that every one of its events seems chillingly, ominously possible.”—Anne Tyler, The New York Times Book ReviewA startling, imaginative novel from the winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureA violent war for equality has come to the white suburbs, driving out the ruling minorityFor years, it had been what is called a “deteriorating situation.” Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family—liberal whites—are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July—the shifts in character and relationships—gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.

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"A riveting history of South Africa and a penetrating portrait of a courageous woman." -- The New YorkerA must read fiction of South Africa from the winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureThis is the moving story of the unforgettable Rosa Burger, a young woman from South Africa cast in the mold of a revolutionary tradition. Rosa tries to uphold her heritage handed on by martyred parents while still carving out a sense of self. Although it is wholly of today, Burger's Daughter can be compared to those 19th century Russian classics that make a certain time and place come alive, and yet stand as universal celebrations of the human spirit. Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born and lives in South Africa.

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Nadine Gordimer is one of our most telling contemporary writers. With each new work, she attacks - with a clear-eyed lack of sentimentality, and an understanding of the darkest depths of the human soul - the inextricable link between personal life and political, communal history. The revelation of this theme in each new work, not only in her homeland South Africa, but the twenty-first century world, is evidence of her literary genius: in the sharpness of her psychological insights, the stark beauty of her language, the complexity of her characters and the difficult choices with which they are faced. In No Time Like the Present, Gordimer brings the reader into the lives of Steven Reed and Jabulile Gumede, a 'mixed' couple, both of whom have been combatants in the struggle for freedom against apartheid. Once clandestine lovers under racist law forbidding sexual relations between white and black, they are now in the new South Africa. The place and time where freedom - the 'better life for all' that was fought for and promised - is being created but also challenged by political and racial tensions, while the hangover of moral ambiguities and the vast and growing gap between affluence and mass poverty, continue to haunt the present. No freedom from personal involvement in these or in the personal intimacy of love. The subject is contemporary, but Gordimer's treatment is timeless. In No Time Like the Present, she shows herself once again a master novelist, at the height of her prodigious powers.

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For years, it has been what is called a 'deteriorating situation'. Now all over South Africa the cities are battlegrounds. The members of the Smales family - liberal whites - are rescued from the terror by their servant, July, who leads them to refuge in his native village. What happens to the Smaleses and to July - the shifts in character and relationships - gives us an unforgettable look into the terrifying, tacit understandings and misunderstandings between blacks and whites.

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In this collection of sixteen stories, Gordimer brings unforgettable characters from every corner of society to life: a child refugee fleeing civil war in Mozambique; a black activist's deserted wife longing for better times; and, a rich safari party indulging themselves while lionesses circle their lodge. "Jump" is a vivid, disturbing and rewarding portrait of life in South Africa under apartheid.

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