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Talks with the prize-winning author of Beethoven was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories, July's People, The Pickup, and many other book
Nadine Gordimer’s Fiction is a major study of the life and writings of Nadine Gordimer, a towering figure in the literary and cultural life of South Africa in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, recognised for her fiction through several prizes, most notably the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature. It has the makings of a guide, taking the reader through the complexities in Gordimer’s life, literature, and society, backed by academic research (doctoral and postdoctoral) and informed by Dr. Mazhar’s study visit to South Africa, including a face-to-face interview with Gordimer. The reader gets a rich picture mediated by the author’s own intellectual journey from Pakistan – the country of her birth – and the United Kingdom. Dr. Mazhar maps the complexities of colonialism in South Africa and beyond in different forms, most notably in the legislated discrimination based on race/ethnicity, Apartheid (1948–1994). Covering the literary writings and political activism of Gordimer both during and after Apartheid, the book provides the reader with a detailed account of individual works of fiction, and vistas of critical thought and action that serve as their source and backdrop. Dr. Mazhar draws on the cultural theories of Homi Bhabha, especially on the notion of The Third Space, a fictional space/borderland between social and political polarisations, which allows for reflection, refinement, and re-action that is transformational and psychologically uplifting. She demonstrates that Gordimer takes her characters through such spaces, which allow for a transformational experience that leads to perspectives/realisations that were missing as a result of constraints that were externally imposed by law and tradition and interiorised as a survival mode. Dr. Mazhar concludes that Gordimer gracefully articulates her vision for a world free of complexities, which one must strive for. Although the book presents the academic analysis of Gordimer‘s fiction and the memoir as separate parts, there are organic connections between the two, which link the social ethos, political struggles, varied ideological perspectives, and ethnic and trans-ethnic identities from which Gordimer draws her subjects and their lives and depicts them through appropriate narrative techniques. Nadine Gordimer’s Fiction is a welcome addition to books on author studies, literary criticism, and South African culture and society. It offers excellent material for both academic and non-academic readers. The style of writing used in the book is clear and simple, yet powerful. This can help the reader to appreciate the enormous achievement of Gordimer, which has established her as a major literary figure in South Africa and beyond. Dr. Balasubramanyam Chandramohan PhD (Shef), FHEA, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
The award to Nadine Gordimer of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 was an affirmation of her distinctive contribution to twentieth-century fiction and to the creation of a literature that challenges apartheid. In this study, which may be used as an introduction as well as by those already familiar with Gordimer's work, Dominic Head discusses each of her novels in detail, paying close attention to the texts both as a reflection of events and situations in the real world, and as evidence of her constant rethinking of her craft. Head shows how Gordimer's concerns, apparent in her earliest novels, are developed through increasing stress on the politics of textuality; and he pursues the implications of this development to consider how Gordimer's later work contributes to postmodernist fiction, and to a recentering of political engagement in an era of uncertainty.
Apartheid and Beyond explores a wide range of South African writings to demonstrate the way apartheid functioned in its day-to-day operations as a geographical system of control, exerting its power through such spatial mechanisms as residential segregation, bantustans, passes, and prisons.
This reference volume serves as a companion to Third World women's literatures in English and in English translation by presenting entries on works, writers, and themes. Entries are chosen to present a balance of well-known writers and emerging ones, contemporary as well as historical writers, and representative selections of genres, literary styles, and themes. What plays have been written by women in the developing world? What books have been written by Sri Lankan or Brazilian women? Which works address themes of feminism or exile or politics in the Third World? These are the types of questions that can now be answered through Fister's companion to Third World women's literatures in English and English translation. Organized alphabetically, this reference volume presents entries on works, writers, and themes. Entries are chosen to present a balance of well-known writers and emerging ones, contemporary as well as historical writers, and representative selections of genres, literary styles, and themes. By providing information about and leads to works by and about Third World women, an important and largely marginalized literature, Fister has created a unique reference tool that will help teachers, scholars, and librarians, both public and academic, expand their definitions of the literary, making the voices of Third World women available in the same format in which many companions to Western literature do. An important book for all public and college-level libraries.
Now a firmly established part of world literature course offerings in many general education curricula, African literature is no longer housed exclusively with African Studies programs, and is often studied in English, French, Portuguese, Women's Studies, and Comparative Studies departments. This book helps fill the great need for research materials on this topic, presenting the best resources available for 300 African writers. These writers have been carefully selected to include both well-known writers and those less commonly studied yet highly influential. They are drawn from both the Sub-Sahara and the Maghreb, the major geographical regions of Africa. The study of Africa was introduced into the curriculum of institutions of higher learning in the United States in the 1960s, when the Black Consciousness movement in the United States and the Cold War and decolonization movements in Africa created a need for the systematic study of other regions of the world. Between 1986 and 1991, three Africans won Nobel literature prizes: Soyinka, Mahfouz, and Gordimer, and the visibility of African writers increased. They are now a firmly established part of world literature courses in many general education curricula throughout North America. African Writers is meant to serve as a resource for introductory material on 300 writers from 39 countries. These writers were selected on the basis on two criteria: that there is material on them in an easily available reference work; and that there is some information of research value on free Web sites. Each writer is from the late-19th or 20th century, with the notable exception of Olaudah Equiano, an 18th-century African whose slave narrative is generally considered the first work of African literature. All entries are annotated.
In a bold and sweeping reevaluation of the past two centuries of women's writing, At Home in the World argues that this body of work has been defined less by domestic concerns than by an active engagement with the most pressing issues of public life: from class and religious divisions, slavery, warfare, and labor unrest to democracy, tyranny, globalism, and the clash of cultures. In this new literary history, Maria DiBattista and Deborah Epstein Nord contend that even the most seemingly traditional works by British, American, and other English-language women writers redefine the domestic sphere in ways that incorporate the concerns of public life, allowing characters and authors alike to forge new, emancipatory narratives. The book explores works by a wide range of writers, including canonical figures such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Harriet Jacobs, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Toni Morrison; neglected or marginalized writers like Mary Antin, Tess Slesinger, and Martha Gellhorn; and recent and contemporary figures, including Nadine Gordimer, Anita Desai, Edwidge Danticat, and Jhumpa Lahiri. DiBattista and Nord show how these writers dramatize tensions between home and the wider world through recurrent themes of sailing forth, escape, exploration, dissent, and emigration. Throughout, the book uncovers the undervalued public concerns of women writers who ventured into ever-wider geographical, cultural, and political territories, forging new definitions of what it means to create a home in the world. The result is an enlightening reinterpretation of women's writing from the early nineteenth century to the present day.
Using a broad range of literature to examine the political culture of white South Africa, Peck finds both a preoccupation with political issues and a dislike for politics. The literature examined ranges from South African propaganda, through a variety of bestsellers—adventure stories and mystery novels written by authors such as Wilbur Smith and James McClure—to self-conscious literary works of the canonical white South African authors such as Alan Paton, André Brink, and Nadine Gordimer. The study gives attention to anti-political features of the liberal tradition that dominated South African writing, and to the failure of writers who undermined that tradition to generate a more positive view of politics. The morbid fascination with politics that is found across the full spectrum of creative writing is a reflection of the circumstances in which writers found themselves, but it is still a worrisome feature of the white South African political culture.
Nadine Gordimer began her writing life at a relatively young age. In 1991, that life received the ultimate recognition when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In this volume, Gordimer, who has been described by her peers as a formidable visitor from the future, the leviathan of South African letters and almost always as a gifted writer with extraordinary powers of observation, is paid homage by fellow writers from South Africa and other parts of the world. The book comprises readings, tributes, fiction, poetry, interviews and photographs which engage directly and indirectly with Gordimer's work and her still unfolding legacy.
