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...
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"Nadine Gordimer has become, in the whole solid body of her work, the literary voice and conscience of her society," declared Maxwell Geismar in Saturday Review. In numerous novels, short stories, and...
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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...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Frank Kermode
[Selected Stories] is full of pondered, significant details, the symptoms of [the] dementia—the bureaucratic and social combinations that make everybody ill, wh...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Frank Tuohy
The ironies that surround the liberal point of view in a multiracial society have been a persistent theme in Nadine Gordimer's work. In A Soldier's Embrace...
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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...
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Critical Essay by Edith Milton
Gordimer is no reformer; she looks beyond political and social outrage to the sad contradiction of the human spirit, which delivers to those in power an even worse sent...
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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...
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Critical Essay by John Thompson
A Soldier's Embrace is a collection of thirteen of [Gordimer's] stories, all very short. Still, although they are short, and strong, like almost everythi...
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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...
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In the following excerpt, Bayley discusses the stories of Jump in the context of classic stories by literary masters of narrative art.
A Jane Austen of today is barely imaginable: but if one noneth...
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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...
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In the following interview, Gordimer discusses her work and political change in South Africa.
It was a frosty New York autumn afternoon, and Nadine Gordimer, South Africa's pre-eminent novel...
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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...
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In the following essay, Huggan applies Gordimer's short story theory to her practice, analyzing "Six Feet of Country" in comparison to three later stories.
Nadine Gordimer...
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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...
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In the following review, Eder emphasizes the theme of change, both social and personal, in the South Africa of None to Accompany Me.
There are revolutions—the French, the Chinese, the Russia...
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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...
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In the following review, Wood concentrates on characterization in None to Accompany Me, detecting autobiographical impulses in the narrative.
Prisons have opened, exiles have returned, the notion o...
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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'...
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In the following excerpt, Mitchell focuses on Gordimer's narrative technique in Not for Publication.
It would be futile to look for a flowering of experimental writing among the fiction publ...
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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...
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In the following excerpt, Topping Bazin discusses how utopian and dystopian visions of Gordimer's novels reflect past and present racism in South Africa.
However different their lives, Doris...
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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...
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In the following excerpt, the critic highlights the theme of lonliness in Not for Publication.
Although Miss Nadine Gordimer's scene in her short stories is often South Africa, and her theme...
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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...
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In the following excerpt, Godwin discusses the changing African dimension of the characters in Selected Stories.
Reading a collection of stories by a good writer affords a pleasure quite distinct f...
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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...
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In the following excerpt, Clayton comments on Gordimer's writing style in Something out There.
Nadine Gordimer continues to send sane, humane reports from the edge of darkness. In her finest...
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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.
...
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In the following review, Roraback notes the freshness of the themes in Jump, despite their familiarity.
Nadine Gordimer takes you by the hand. Sometimes she leads you gently. Sometimes, impatient, ...
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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...
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Gullason is an American editor and critic. In the following essay, he offers a laudatory review of Livingstone's Companions.
One of the most stirring voices out of South Africa is the distin...
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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...
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Mortimer is a Welsh novelist, short story writer, and critic. In the following review, she terms Selected Stories a social history of South Africa and praises Gordimer's use of the milieu in he...
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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...
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Mojtabai is an American novelist and critic. In the following review, she overviews the themes and plots of A Soldier's Embrace.
We paid attention when Nadine Gordimer's most recent n...
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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...
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In the following essay, Githii compares several of Gordimer's earlier and later stories in order to trace her thematic and stylistic maturation.
Nadine Gordimer's Selected Stories (19...
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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...
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An Indian novelist, nonfiction writer, and critic, Rushdie is best known for his controversial treatment of Islam in his novel The Satanic Verses (1988). In the review below, he provides a thematic tr...
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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...
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William Peden is an American critic and educator who has written extensively on the American short story and on American historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. In the foll...
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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...
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In the following favorable review of Jump, and Other Stories, Wideman commends Gordimer's eloquent, realistic portrayals of interpersonal relationships amidst the turbulent socio-political cond...
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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 ...
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In the following essay, Lazar examines Gordimer's attitude toward Feminism as evidenced in her short fiction collection.
There is something of a critical lacuna in relation to Nadine Gordime...
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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...
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In the essay below, Lomberg traces Gordimer's changing attitudes towards life and love in her short fiction.
In the introduction to her Selected Stories, Nadine Gordimer suggests that the pr...
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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...
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In the following review, Stallings provides a thematic analysis of the stories comprising Six Feet of the Country.
With each new book, Nadine Gordimer augments her status as a writer. Six Feet of t...
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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...
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Curran is an American novelist. In the following negative review of Friday's Footprint, she notes the uneven prose style and lack of psychological complexity in Gordimer's stories.
N...
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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...
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Tracy is a English novelist and travel writer. In the following essay, she provides a mixed review of Not for Publication.
There is no living writer of short stories more interesting, varied and fe...
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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 ...
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In the following essay, Huggan applies Gordimer's theoretical writings regarding the short story form to four of her short fictions: “Six Feet of the Country,” “A Company o...
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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...
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In the following essay, Froelich and Halle contend that “Once Upon a Time” reflects an important stage in Gordimer's political and literary development.
Although she feels a ...
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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....
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In the following essay, Newman offers a thematic analysis of the stories in Jump and maintains that with this volume Gordimer explores post-apartheid political and social concerns.
As apartheid has...
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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...
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In the following review, the anonymous critic argues that Gordimer “can still deliver a rabbit punch to the solar plexus as efficiently as anybody now writing.”
The collision of perso...
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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 ...
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In the following review, Callil notes the stark subject matter and lack of punctuation in the stories of Loot, arguing that the tales are difficult to read.
Nadine Gordimer's exceptional gif...
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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...
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In the following essay, Eckstein considers Nadine Gordimer's short stories as an attempt to break down dichotomies in South African political culture.
I know a recent college graduate, a you...
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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...
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Stockholm (dpa) - Winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature since
1945:
<#>
2006 Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
2005 Harold Pinter (Britain)
2004 Elfried...
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Johannesburg (dpa) - The killing of South African reggae star
Lucky Dube in a botched hijacking in Johannesburg last week has taken
outrage over the country's violent crime ...
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Nobel laureate for literature Nadine Gordimer, noted for her work about the inhumanity of apartheid, has become one of just a few South Africans to receive France's highest award, the Legion of Hon...
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London (dpa) - Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, often referred to as
the father of modern African writing, has been awarded the 2007 Man
Booker International Prize for fiction...
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Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe won the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for fiction Wednesday, beating such celebrated nominees as Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan.The $120,000 prize...
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Berlin (dpa) - Prominent writers from 51 countries have descended
on Berlin for the city's 13-day International Literature Festival,
which kicks off Tuesday with a speech by...
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JOHANNESBURG, Dec 4 (Reuters) - A group of prominent
writers, including Nobel Prize winners Gunter Grass and Nadine
Gordimer, accused European and African leaders on Tuesday of
political cowardice...
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LISBON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - European and African leaders will
seek to forge a fresh partnership to tackle issues like trade,
immigration and peacekeeping this week when they hold their
first summit ...
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