Nadine Gordimer

Overview

Nadine Gordimer born Springs, Transvaal, South Africa November 20, 1923 (d. 2014). Awarded Nobel Literature Prize, 1991; early opponent of Apartheid; books banned; sheltered African National Congress leaders.

Quotations

"The writer is of service to humankind only insofar as the writer uses the word even against his or her own loyalties, trusts the state of being. . . to yield somewhere fragmentary phrases of truth, which is the final word of words, never changed by our stumbling efforts to spell it out and write it down, never changed by lies, by semantic sophistry, by the dirtying of the word for the purposes of racism, sexism, prejudice, domination, the glorification of destruction, the curses and the praise-songs." (Nobel acceptance speech, 1991; photo 2010 wiki by Bengt Boberger)