Nadine Gordimer Summary

Nadine Gordimer (born 1923) was the Nobel Prize-winning author of short stories and novels reflecting the disintegration of South African society. While her early works were in the tradition of libera... Read more

A Nobel Prize winner, an outspoken critic of apartheid, a frequently controversial public figure in her native South Africa, and one of the leading novelists of her age, Nadine Gordimer has been writi... Read more

Critical Essay by Paul Bailey In several of her novels—A World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, The Lying Days and The Conservationist—Nadine Gordimer implies that the insulted a... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert F. Haugh Miss Gordimer is a stylist, a gem-polisher who creates in the reader a sense of Katherine Mansfield's shimmering immediacy of image. Sometimes the gems are no... Read more

Critical Essay by Hermione Lee [Nadine Gordimer] traces in her stories a shift in subject-matter from earlier paternalism to the multiracial dreams of the Fifties and on to the disillusioned legacy o... Read more

Critical Essay by Vivian Gornick [Gordimer's] knowledge of the politics of her country is strong and her sense of the politicalness of life profound, but her power resides in the force of sexu... Read more

In the following review, Poore praises the stories in Not for Publication. The coolly controlled fury of Nadine Gordimer's storytelling stands out in this new collection [Not for Publication... Read more

In the following essay, Eckstein discusses the political atmosphere of South Africa and how it affected Gordimer's career and fiction. The world literary community has noted each year the pr... Read more

In the following essay, Knipp traces the thematic development of traditional expressions of Western liberalism in Gordimer's fiction. Nadine Gordimer's ten novels and seven collection... Read more

In the following review, Dinnage outlines the narrative of None to Accompany Me. For forty years Nadine Gordimer has been revealing to us the splendours and miseries of life in her extraordinary co... Read more

In the following review, Bausch praises Gordimer's personal approach to social and political issues in her None to Accompany Me. I read somewhere long ago that a good novelist is also a soci... Read more

In the following excerpt, Harding assesses the narrative strengths of None to Accompany Me. … Nadine Gordimer's novel [None to Accompany Me] is set in the period after Mandela'... Read more

In the following review, Graham describes Gordimer's artistic ethos as outlined in Writing and Being. This collection of Nadine Gordimer's recent Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harv... Read more

In the following review, Milton comments on the themes of Writing and Being. Nadine Gordimer is a writer whose moral vision predicates her literary one. The same could be said, to some degree, abou... Read more

In the following excerpt, Cruttwell contrasts the mood of Gordimer's fiction with Flannery O'Connor's. … It is mainly in male authors that the posturing seems obligatory... Read more

In the following excerpt, Kearns discusses the politics of Gordimer's fiction in Something Out There. … Nadine Gordimer's Something Out There is a collection of nine short stor... Read more

In the following essay, Newman analyzes the psychological connections that Rosa makes between race and sexuality in Burger's Daughter in relation to prevailing cultural attitudes toward each. ... Read more

In the following review of The Soft Voice of the Serpent, Barkham praises the subtlety and sensitivity of Gordimer's narrative voice. To the chorus of eloquent voices emerging from South Afr... Read more

In the following essay, Gordimer outlines her philosophy of short story writing. After I had selected and arranged these stories, the present publisher asked me to provide some kind of introductio... Read more

Redman is an American critic. In the following review, he lauds the scope of the stories included in Selected Stories. Nadine Gordimer is a South African who writes critically about South Africa. T... Read more

Gornick is an American nonfiction writer, editor, and critic. Below, she offers a negative assessment of A Soldier's Embrace, describing the stories as "fragmentary" and the colle... Read more

Lehmann-Haupt is a Scottish-born American critic. In the following favorable review, he explores the varying narrative techniques employed in Something Out There. Betrayal, crimes of conscience, th... Read more

In the following essay, Hill discusses defining characteristics of Gordimer's fiction, in particular the impact of South Africa's political and social landscape on her work. [Gordimer... Read more

Below, Wieseltier discusses the effects of apartheid on Gordimer's black and white characters in "Something Out There." "Each torpid turn of the world has such disinheri... Read more

Banville is an Irish novelist and short story writer. In the following negative assessment of Jump, and Other Stories, he derides Gordimer's reportorial voice and contends that the short story ... Read more

In the following essay, Colleran discusses the ways in which socio-political conditions in South Africa inform Gordimer's work. It is obvious that the archive of a society . . . cannot be d... Read more

Stern is an Irish novelist, short story writer, translator, and critic. In the following review, he offers a positive assessment of Gordimer's Six Feet of the Country. In this her second col... Read more

Chase is an American novelist, children's author, educator, and critic. In the following review, she examines the style and scope of Friday's Footprint. Whenever a careful reader make... Read more

Brown is a South African critic. In the following review, he praises the maturity and emotional intensity of the stories of Not for Publication. This superb collection of stories [Not for Publicati... Read more

In the following mixed review, Bell examines Gordimefs treatment of South Africa's repressive political and social conditions in Livingstone's Companions. In a recent review of a new ... Read more

In the following essay, Cancel examines the cinematic adaptation of Gordimer's short story “Oral History,” contending that the film version “is remarkable in the way it tak... Read more

In the following essay, Harrow considers the relationship between Ernest Hemingway's “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and Gordimer's “A Hunting Accident.&#... Read more

In the following essay, Jacobs asserts that Jump and Other Stories represents an important stage in Gordimer's political and literary development, as it begins to explore postapartheid politica... Read more

In the following review, Smee derides the prose style of the stories in Loot, finding it inferior. Nadine Gordimer's lazily allusive and unkempt prose style makes most of the stories in her ... Read more

In the following mixed review, Chettle maintains that the theme of transition is central to the stories collected in Loot. Writers from South Africa, like all artists, naturally hope to transcend t... Read more

In the following essay, Newman discusses Gordimer's life, career, awards and recognition, and overall body of work, while also examining the era in which Gordimer wrote and the critical recepti... Read more