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July's People Author Biography

Gordimer was born in Springs, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg in the Transvaal region of South Africa. in 1923. Springs served as the setting of her first novel, The Lying Days (1953). Her father was a jeweler from Latvia and her mother was of British descent. Growing up, Gordimer was often sequestered indoors because her mother feared she had a weak heart. She spent some time in convent school where, she admits in an autobiographical essay "A Bolter and the Invincible Summer" (J 963), she was a habitual truant.

In response to her confinement, Gordimer began writing at the age of nine. Her first published story was "The Quest for Seen Gold," which appeared in June of 1937 in the Johannesburg Sunday Express. Fortunately, she maintains, the publication of her work did not lead to the smothering that one sees with those considered "gifted:' Instead she was...
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