Nadine Gordimer

Novelist, Author

1923 –

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Who is Nadine Gordimer?

Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".

Gordimer's writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes.

Famous Quotes:

  • The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars.
  • Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
  • If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.
  • In a democracy -- even if it is a so-called democracy like our white-?litist one -- the greatest veneration one can show the rule of law is to keep a watch on it, and to reserve the right to judge unjust laws and the subversion of the function of the law by the power of the state. That vigilance is the most important proof of respect for the law.
  • Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.
  • Exile as a mode of genius no longer exists; in place of Joyce we have the fragments of work appearing in Index on Censorship.
  • Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?
  • The gap between the committed and the indifferent is a Sahara whose faint trails, followed by the mind's eye only, fade out in sand.
  • There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.
  • Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

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Born
Nov 20, 1923
Springs
Religion
  • Atheism
Ethnicity
  • British diaspora in Africa
Nationality
  • South Africa
Profession
Education
  • University of the Witwatersrand

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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"Nadine Gordimer." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/nadine_gordimer>.

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