Overview

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014) was a writer and political activist. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991. In this 1983 study, Christopher Heywood stresses the point that in her very first novel, The Lying Days (1953), Gordimer, besides weaving a delicate web of personal relations, also takes a detached, historical view of man as a haunted species on a complex planet, (a view not unlike that of Thomas Hardy) and this evolutionary theme has persisted through her subsequent writing. The first three novels (1953-63) are much concerned with the search for satisfactory personal relationships, and may be juxtaposed with a well-known essay of 1959, Where do Whites Fit In? The next three (1966-74) explore the wider social tensions which produce tragedy. Her latest novel, July's People, describes the unusual situation of a white family having to adapt its way of life to that of a black settlement in the Transvaal. In a later section of his essay Christopher Heywood surveys the six collections of short stories, each of them indicating a turning-point in the development of the author's art and thought, and together with her critical essay, The Black Interpreters, marking her growing understanding of society as seen from the black man's point of view.

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