Nadine Gordimer
During her lifelong fight against injustice, the South African author has shown the true power of words
By DONALD MORRISON
Nadine Gordimer says the proudest day of her life was not when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, but when she testified at a 1986 treason trial on behalf of 22 South African anti-apartheid activists. Gordimer is no literary bystander. She joined the African National Congress well before it was legal and once hid its leaders in her home. When Nelson Mandela was released from
prison in 1990, Gordimer was one of the first people he wanted to see.
Yet Gordimer's greatest contributions to the struggle in her native land have been carried out in her study. There she has penned most of her 14 novels and 11 story collections, work that has inspired freedom lovers everywhere — but also cautions them against their own frailties. Take her latest novel, Get a Life. It traces the anguish of a cancer-stricken ecologist who, while battling a planned nuclear power plant, must undergo radiation therapy, making him a health hazard to his family. The book is a deft portrait of the dilemmas facing South Africa now that apartheid has been vanquished and more mundane problems intrude. Gordimer, 83, points out the kinds of pitfalls that have caused other postrevolutionary governments to stumble. As she once said, "Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb."
When Fidel Castro fell ill last summer, Gordimer joined six other Nobel prizewinners in warning the U.S. to keep its hands off Cuba. She persuaded 20 major authors to write short stories for a 2004 book for the Treatment Action Campaign, which lobbies for hiv/aids funding. "If musicians can get up and sing," she said, "we can get up and write." The book, like Gordimer, is still out there campaigning.
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April 28, 2004 |
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October 11, 2004 |
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October 10, 2005 |
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