Nadine Gordimer, the second daughter of Isidore and Nan Myers Gordimer, was born in Springs, a small mining town outside Johannesburg, South Africa, on November 20, 1923. Her father was an immigrant Jewish watchmaker from Lithuania, and her mother came from a middle-class British family. When Gordimer was eleven, her parents took her out of the school system because of a minor heart condition. Lonely without her peers, she compensated by reading. In 1945, she attended the University of the Witwatersrand for a year.

On March 6, 1949, Gordimer married Gerald Gavron. They had a daughter, Oriane, a year later and divorced in 1952. Gordimer married Reinhold Cassirer, an art dealer from Germany, in 1955, and they had a son named Hugo. Gordimer also has a stepdaughter from her second marriage.

Gordimer began writing short stories in her early teens, and she continues to write short and long fiction. Her most recent work...