Nadine Gordimer
From ArticleWorld
Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer decorated with awards and honorary degrees. She is the 1999 Nobel Prize in literature recipient.
Biography
Nadine Gordimer was born on November 20, 1923 in Springs Gauteng, a small mining town just outside of Johannesburg. Her father was Isidoire Gordimer, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania. Her mother, Nan, was from England and raised Nadine Christian.
Gordimer attended the Anglican covenant school and later attended Witwatersand University, where she did finish her degree.
Gordimer’s work was first published in 1937 – the children’s short story The Quest for Seen Gold. In 1949, she released her first collection of short stories in Face to Face. In 1953, Gordimer published her first novel The Lying Days.
In 1954, Gordimer married Reinhold Cassirer, who died in 2001 of emphysema. Cassier was an esteemed art collector and founded South Africa’s Sotherby’s and later ran his own art gallery. The couple had one son, Hugo.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Gordimer taught English and literature at several American universities.
Gordimer received the Booker Prize in 1974 and the Nobel Prize in literature in 1991. She holds honorary degrees from Yale University, Harvard University, University of York in England, Columbia University, University of Cape Town, and Witwatersand University. France also named her Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Partial list of works
- The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952), collection of short stories
- Occasion for Loving (1963), fiction
- The Late Bourgeois World (1966), fiction
- Something Out There (1984), collection of short stories
- My Son’s Story (1990), fiction
- Wiriting & Being (1995), non-fiction
- Loot (2003), collection of short stories