Nadine Gordimer was born in South Africa in 1923. Her parents were Jewish, of British and Latvian origin, but Gordimer herself was not religious. Gordimer was influenced as a young child by her mother’s concern about poverty and discrimination against black people. From her early childhood, Gordimer saw how the white minority, to which she belonged, increasingly took away the few rights of the black majority.
She began writing at the age of 9 and her first short story was published when she was 15. Her first novel, The Lying Days, appeared in 1953. Since then she wrote novels, short stories and essays all dealing with the social and political situation of her country. During her lifetime, Gordimer was awarded 10 honorary doctorates in literature from various universities around the world and is probably South Africa’s most famous novelist.
Although many of Gordimer’s books were banned by the Apartheid regime in South Africa, they were widely read around the world and demonstrated changing attitudes to Apartheid in South Africa over the years. She never considered going into exile, as many white opponents of Apartheid were forced to do, but in the 1960s and 1970s she lectured at universities in the USA for short periods.
“Learning to write sent me falling, falling through the surface of the South African way of life,” Gordimer once said.
She was openly an African National Congress (ANC) supporter even when it was banned in South Africa. She also campaigned later in life for HIV/AIDS causes.
A fine descriptive writer, Gordimer was famous for the sharpness of her writing about the complicated personal and social relationships in her country: the interplay between races, racial conflict, and the terrible pain inflicted by South Africa’s unjust Apartheid laws.
In 1991, one of the highlights in Gordimer’s career came when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was the first South African to win the award and the first woman to win in 25 years. In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela wrote of his time in prison: “I tried to read books about South Africa or by South African writers. I read all the novels of Nadine Gordimer that I could and learned a great deal about the white liberal sensibility.”
In 2006, her house was robbed. During the robbery, she and her housekeeper were dragged upstairs and her housekeeper was punched and kicked when she started screaming. When asked about the attack, Gordimer replied that she was completely calm, and that she thought, “Oh well, it’s my turn to experience what so many others have.” She said: “I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.”
Nadine Gordimer died in her sleep in her Johannesburg home on 14 July 2014 at the age of 90. She had lived in Johannesburg most of her life. She had two children and several grandchildren.

Five must-read books

• The Conservationist (1974)
• Burger’s Daughter (1979)
• July’s People (1981)
• Life Times: Stories 1952-2007 (2010)
• No Time Like the Present (2012)