Editing Nadine Gordimer (section)

==Works, themes, and reception==
Gordimer achieved lasting international recognition for her works, most of which deal with political issues, as well as the "moral and psychological tensions of her racially divided home country."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gordimer.htm |title=Nadine Gordimer |website=Books and Writers (kirjasto.sci.fi) |first=Petri |last=Liukkonen |publisher=[[Kuusankoski]] Public Library |location=Finland |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081204041439/http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gordimer.htm |archive-date=4 December 2008 |url-status=dead  }}</ref> Virtually all of Gordimer's works deal with themes of love and politics, particularly concerning race in South Africa. Always questioning power relations and truth, Gordimer tells stories of ordinary people, revealing moral ambiguities and choices. Her characterisation is nuanced, revealed more through the choices her characters make than through their claimed identities and beliefs. She also weaves in subtle details within the characters' names.{{citation needed|date=October 2022}}

===Overview of critical works===
Her first published novel, ''[[The Lying Days]]'' (1953), takes place in Gordimer's home town of Springs, Transvaal, an East Rand mining town near [[Johannesburg]]. Arguably a semi-autobiographical work, ''The Lying Days'' is a [[Bildungsroman]], charting the growing political awareness of a young white woman, Helen, toward small-town life and South African racial division.<ref name="Norman">{{cite web |url=http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/special-commissioned-essay-lying-days-by-nadine/themes-lying-days?print=1 |title=Judith Newman Special Commissioned Essay on The Lying Days by Nadine Gordimer Essay – Critical Essays |website=eNotes.com |date=20 November 1923 |access-date=2 November 2016 |archive-date=23 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110723114806/http://www.enotes.com/contemporary-literary-criticism/special-commissioned-essay-lying-days-by-nadine/themes-lying-days?print=1 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

In her 1963 work, ''[[Occasion for Loving]]'', Gordimer puts apartheid and love squarely together. Her protagonist, Ann Davis, is married to Boaz Davis, an ethnomusicologist, but in love with Gideon Shibalo, an artist with several failed relationships. Davis is white, however, and Shibalo is black, and South Africa's government criminalised such relationships.<ref>[https://www.ijr.org.za/2017/07/attitudes-towards-interracial-marriages-in-south-africa/     Institute for Justice and Reconciliation website, ''Attitudes towards interracial marriages in South Africa'', article dated 3 July 2017]</ref><ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5ykl  BBC website, ''South Africa’s first inter-racial marriage'']</ref><ref>[https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/prohibition-mixed-marriages-act-commences  South African History Online website, ''The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act commences'']</ref>

Gordimer collected the [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]] for ''A Guest of Honour'' in 1971 and, in common with a number of winners of this award, she was to go on to win the [[Booker Prize]]. The Booker was awarded to Gordimer for her 1974 novel, ''[[The Conservationist]]'', and was a co-winner with [[Stanley Middleton]]'s novel ''Holiday''. ''[[The Conservationist]]'' explores [[Zulu people|Zulu]] culture and the world of a wealthy white industrialist through the eyes of Mehring, the [[antihero]]. [[Per Wästberg]] described ''The Conservationist'' as Gordimer's "densest and most poetical novel".<ref name="Wastberg" /> Thematically covering the same ground as [[Olive Schreiner]]'s ''The Story of an African Farm'' (1883) and [[J. M. Coetzee]]'s ''In the Heart of the Country'' (1977), the "conservationist" seeks to conserve nature to preserve the apartheid system, keeping change at bay. When an unidentified corpse is found on his farm, Mehring does the "right thing" by providing it a proper burial; but the dead person haunts the work, a reminder of the bodies on which Mehring's vision would be built.{{citation needed|date=October 2022}}

Gordimer's 1979 novel ''[[Burger's Daughter]]'' is the story of a woman analysing her relationship with her father, a martyr to the anti-apartheid movement. The child of two Communist and anti-apartheid revolutionaries, Rosa Burger finds herself drawn into political activism as well. Written in the aftermath of the 1976 [[Soweto uprising]], the novel was shortly thereafter banned by the South African government. Gordimer described the novel as a "coded homage" to [[Bram Fischer]], the lawyer who defended [[Nelson Mandela]] and other anti-apartheid activists.<ref name="Wastberg"/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.law.wits.ac.za/bramfischer/then.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070704102111/http://www.law.wits.ac.za/bramfischer/then.htm|archive-date=4 July 2007|title=Bram Fischer Human Rights Programme|work=Wits School of Law|year=2005|access-date=16 August 2010}}</ref>

In ''[[July's People]]'' (1981), she imagines a bloody South African revolution, in which white people are hunted and murdered after blacks revolt against the apartheid government. The work follows Maureen and Bamford Smales, an educated white couple, hiding for their lives with July, their long-time former servant. The novel plays off the various groups of "July's people": his family and his village, as well as the Smales. The story examines how people cope with the terrible choices forced on them by violence, race hatred, and the state.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1991|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1991/gordimer/article/|website=NobelPrize.org|language=en-US|access-date=29 May 2020}}</ref>

''The House Gun'' (1998) was Gordimer's second post-apartheid novel. It follows the story of a couple, Claudia and Harald Lingard, dealing with their son Duncan's murder of one of his housemates. The novel treats the rising crime rate in South Africa and the guns that virtually all households have, as well as the legacy of South African apartheid and the couple's concerns about their son's lawyer, who is black. The novel was optioned for film rights to Granada Productions.<ref name="Garner">{{cite web | first1=Dwight | last1=Garner | first2=Nadine | last2=Gordimer | url=http://www.salon.com/books/int/1998/03/cov_si_09int.html | title=The Salon Interview: Nadine Gordimer | date=March 1998 | work=salon.com | access-date=8 April 2007 | archive-date=31 March 2007 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070331051735/http://www.salon.com/books/int/1998/03/cov_si_09int.html | url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>[http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides/house_gun.asp ReadingGroup Guide], ''The House Gun'' by Nadine Gordimer, Bookreporter.com</ref><ref name="Medalie">David Medalie, "'The Context of the Awful Event': Nadine Gordimer's ''The House Gun''", ''Journal of Southern African Studies'', v.25, n.4 (December 1999), pp. 633–644.</ref>

Gordimer's award-winning 2002 novel, ''[[The Pickup]]'', considers the issues of displacement, alienation, and immigration; class and economic power; religious faith; and the ability for people to see, and love, across these divides. It tells the story of a couple: Julie Summers, a white woman from a financially secure family, and Abdu, an illegal Arab immigrant in South Africa. After Abdu's visa is refused, the couple returns to his homeland, where she is the alien. Her experiences and growth as an alien in another culture form the heart of the work.<ref name="Coetzee-2003">[[J. M. Coetzee]] [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16670 Review of ''The Pickup'' and ''Loot and Other Stories''], nytimes.com, 23 October 2003.</ref><ref name="Kossew">Sue Kossew, "[http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/humanities/exchange/quodlibet/vol1/downloads/Gordimer.pdf Review of Nadine Gordimer, ''The Pickup''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070621172601/http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/humanities/exchange/quodlibet/vol1/downloads/Gordimer.pdf |date=21 June 2007 }}", ''Quodlibet'', v.1, February 2005.</ref><ref>Penguin Book Clubs/Reading Guides, [http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/pickup.html Nadine Gordimer's ''The Pickup''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070506155219/http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/pickup.html |date=6 May 2007 }}, penguingroup.com; accessed 19 June 2015.</ref><ref name="York">Anthony York, "[http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2001/12/06/gordimer/index.html ''The Pickup'' by Nadine Gordimer] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070503042311/http://archive.salon.com/books/review/2001/12/06/gordimer/index.html |date=3 May 2007 }}" (book review), Salon.com, 6 December 2001.</ref>

''[[Get a Life (novel)|Get a Life]]'', written in 2005 after the death of her long-time spouse, Reinhold Cassirer, is the story of a man undergoing treatment for a life-threatening disease. While clearly drawn from personal life experiences, the novel also continues Gordimer's exploration of political themes. The protagonist is an ecologist, battling installation of a planned nuclear plant. But he is at the same time undergoing radiation therapy for his cancer, causing him personal grief and, ironically, rendering him a nuclear health hazard in his own home. Here, Gordimer again pursues the questions of how to integrate everyday life and political activism.<ref name="Morrison"/> ''[[New York Times]]'' critic J. R. Ramakrishnan, who noted a similarity with author [[Mia Alvar]], wrote that Gordimer wrote about "long-suffering spouses and (the) familial enablers of political men" in her fiction.<ref name="twsNYT1">{{cite news 
| author=  J. R. Ramakrishnan
| date= 19 June 2015
| newspaper = [[The New York Times]]
| url= https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/books/review/in-the-country-by-mia-alvar.html?_r=0
| title= 'In the Country,' by Mia Alvar
| access-date= 6 April 2016
| quote=... Alvar’s elegant examination of the political wife is reminiscent of the long-suffering spouses and familial enablers of political men in Nadine Gordimer’s fiction... 
}}</ref>

===Jewish themes and characters===
Gordimer has occasionally given voice to [[Jewish]] characters, rituals and themes in her short stories and novels.

[[Kenneth Bonert]], writing in ''[[The Forward]]'', expressed the view that Jewish identity was rarely explored in her work: "For all of her Jewish heritage and personal connections (not only were her parents and family Jews, so were both of her husbands), overt signs of Jewishness are largely absent from her body of work. It's impossible to guess from the books alone that Gordimer was Jewish; and it would be easy to assume the contrary, since whenever Jews do appear in her fiction, they tend to be seen through the eyes of a non-Jew, looking in with almost anthropological fascination onto an alien culture."<ref name=Kenneth/>

In ''The Later Fiction by Nadine Gordimer'' (Palgrave Macmillan, 1993),  edited by Bryce King, Michael Wade fostered a discussion on Jewish identity as a repressed theme in Gordimer's novel, ''[[A Sport of Nature]]'' (1987): "Any exploration of the Jewish theme in Nadine Gordimer's writing, especially her novels, in an exploration of the absent, the unwritten, the repressed." Wade noted parallels between Gordimer's white, Jewish social milieu with those of Jewish writers living in urban areas on America's east coast: "Jewishness functioning as a mysterious but ineluctable cultural component of individual identity and expressed as an aspect of the nominally Jewish writer's particular, unique quest for identity in a heterogeneous society".<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=155 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

[[Benjamin Ivry]], writing in ''[[The Forward]]'', highlighted several examples where Gordimer employed Jewish characters and themes: "Gordimer proved that indeed anything was possible when examining the personal significance of [[Yiddishkeit]]."<ref name=forwardng/>

In 1951, she wrote "A Watcher of the Dead" for ''[[The New Yorker]]''.<ref name=watcher>Gordimer, Nadine. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1951/06/09/a-watcher-of-the-dead A Watcher of the Dead] ''The New Yorker''. 9 June 1951</ref> It centres on the death of a [[Jewish]] grandmother and her family observing the ritual of ''[[Shemira]]'', as they arrange for a ''[[shomer]]'' to watch over the body from the time of death until burial.<ref name=watcher/> The story later appeared in ''[[The Soft Voice of the Serpent]]'' the following year. 

In the same collection, Gordimer's story, "The Defeated" appeared. It follows the narrator's friendship with a young Jewish immigrant, Miriam Saiyetowitz. Miriam's parents operate a Concession store among the mine compound stores. They later study together at university to become teachers, and Miriam marries a doctor. The narrator visits Miriam's parents on an impulse at their store, they feel abandoned by Miriam, who rarely visits from [[Johannesburg]] with their grandson. The narrator explained "I stood there in Miriam's guilt before the Saiyetovitzes, and they were silent, in the accusation of the humble." For Wade: "Miriam's punishment of her parents for their otherness is severe and complete, and conceals Gordimer's own desire to avenge her sense of displacement on her parents for their otherness."<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=157–158 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In her debut novel ''[[The Lying Days]]'' (1953), a major character, Joel Aaron, son of a working class Jewish shopkeeper, acts as a voice of conscience. He has progressive, enlightened views about apartheid. His ethical stances and sense of Jewish identity and ancestry impresses his non-Jewish white middle-class friend, Helen: "His nature had for mine the peculiar charm of the courage to be itself without defiance."<ref name=forwardng/> Joel is known for his intelligence and integrity. In contrast to Miriam in "The Defeated", Aaron effortlessly accepts his parents and their background.<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=158 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref> He is a [[Zionist]] and makes [[aliyah]] to [[Israel]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=156 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In ''[[A World of Strangers]]'' (1958), there is less Jewish character development, with only a reference to an older man at a party with a thick Eastern European accent with an attractive blonde spouse.<ref name=wade1/> In  ''[[Occasion for Loving]]'' (1963), a Jewish character, Boaz Davis appears, but for Wade: "the only Jewish thing is his name".<ref name=wade1/>

For Wade, Gordimer saw her father as the most emblematic symbol of Jewishness in her household: "she was compelled to make him both the sign of Jewishness and the object of her rejection." The Jewish otherness is also attributed to the patriarch in "Harry's Presence", a 1960 short story by Gordimer. It is notable as Gordimer's only treatment of the Jewish immigrant experience that does not include or mention black characters.<ref name=wade1>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=162 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref> 

In 1966, Gordimer wrote an original story for ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]''. "The Visit" includes an extract from the [[Talmud]] and follows David Levy returning home from a Friday night [[Shabbat]] service.<ref name=jcng>[https://www.thejc.com/news/world/prickly-gordimer-anti-apartheid-star-ossrbpqg 'Prickly' Gordimer, anti-apartheid star] ''The Jewish Chronicle''. 17 July 2014</ref> In the same year she published "A Third Presence" for ''[[The London Magazine]]''.<ref>Gordimer, Nadine. [https://thelondonmagazine.org/fiction-a-third-presence-by-nadine-gordimer/ A Third Presence] ''The London Magazine''. Vol 6, No. 6, September 1966. Accessed on 27 July 2024</ref> The story follows two Jewish sisters, Rose and Naomi Rasovsky. According to Wade: "The story's ending indicates that Gordimer has not yet broken through the wool-and-iron barriers of confusion and conflict aroused by the question of her Jewish identity."<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=164|chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In 1983, she published "Letter from His Father" in ''[[The London Review of Books]]'', a response to [[Franz Kafka]]'s "[[Letter to His Father]]". In the letter, Gordimer makes references to [[Yiddish]], [[Yom Kippur]], [[Aliyah]], [[Kibbutzim]] and [[Yiddish theatre]].<ref>Gordimer, Nadine. [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v05/n19/nadine-gordimer/letter-from-his-father Letter from his Father] ''The London Review of Books''. Vol 5 No. 1, 20 October 1983</ref><ref name=forwardng/>

In her 1984 novella, ''[[Something Out There]]'', the reader is first introduced to Stanley Dubrow, who uses a camera paid for with his [[Bar Mitzvah]] money to capture a photo of a mysterious, dangerous beast, a "something" stalking Johannesburg's affluent white suburbs.<ref name=rush>Rushdie, Salman (29 July 1984). [https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/29/books/something-out-there.html?searchResultPosition=1 Something Out There] ''The New York Times''. Retrieved on 8 March 2025</ref> Later in the novella, Dr Milton Caro, a Jewish pathologist, witnesses the beast from the golf course. Gordimer contrasts his distinguished medical career with his [[petit bourgeois]] upbringing: "the gruff, slow homeliness of a Jewish storekeeper's son whose early schooling was in Afrikaans."

Hillela, a Jewish South African woman, figures as the protagonist of ''[[A Sport of Nature]]'', (1987).<ref name=forwardng/> Wade concluded: "By writing ''A Sport of Nature'' in the transcendent style she chose, she tried again to give meaning to her personal muddle over Jewish identity and experience, this time by creating  Hillela, whose name represents the deepest moral and prophetic tradition in Jewish history, and who, united with Reuel (=[[Jethro]]), the great (not-Jewish) guide and adviser of the beginnings of that history, is able to resolve the inherent contradictions of (the writer's?) white-South-African-radical-Jewish identity. But Hillela is perhaps the most striking example in all Gordimer's writing of 'the Jew that went away', and it is not clear that she succeeds in creating the new sign she seems to have sought."<ref>{{cite book |last=Wade |first=Michael |date=1993|editor-last=King|editor-first=Bryce |title=The Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |pages=171 |chapter=A Sport of Nature: Identity and Repression of the Jewish Subject |isbn=0312085346}}</ref>

In the short story "My Father Leaves Home", that appears in ''Jump: And Other Stories'' (1991), Gordimer describes an Eastern European ''[[shtetl]]'', presumably the hometown of the title character. The [[anti-semitism]] the character faced in Europe makes him more sensitive to racism against black people in South Africa.<ref name=forwardng>[https://forward.com/culture/202047/the-jewish-life-and-times-of-nadine-gordimer/ The Jewish Life and Times of Nadine Gordimer] ''The Forward''. 14 July 2014</ref>

In Gordimer's final novel ''[[No Time Like the Present]]'' (2012), one of the central characters, Stephen, is [[half-Jewish]] and married to a [[Zulu people|Zulu]] woman. His nephew's [[Bar Mitzvah]] prompts a meditation on his own Jewish background and he fails to grasp his brother's embrace of [[Judaism]].<ref name=Kenneth>[https://forward.com/culture/430943/the-gift-nadine-gordimer-gave-to-me/ The Gift Nadine Gordimer Gave to Me] ''The Forward''. 3 October 2019</ref>

===Nobel Prize in Literature===
Gordimer was nominated for [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in [[1972 Nobel Prize in Literature|1972]] and [[1973 Nobel Prize in Literature|1973]] by [[Swedish Academy]] member [[Artur Lundkvist]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=16426|title=Nomination Archive - Nadine Gordimer|website=NobelPrize.org|date=March 2024 |access-date=14 March 2024}}</ref>