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Nadine Gordimer (20 November 1923 – 13 July 2014) was a South African writer, political activist and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".〔 Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as ''Burger's Daughter'' and ''July's People'' were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned, and gave Nelson Mandela advice on his famous 1964 defence speech at the trial which led to his conviction for life. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes. ==Personal life== Gordimer was born near Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg. Her father, Isidore Gordimer, was a Jewish immigrant watchmaker from Žagarė (then Russian Empire, now Lithuania), and her mother, Hannah "Nan" (Myers) Gordimer, was from London. Her mother was from an assimilated family of Jewish origins; Gordimer was raised in a secular household.〔 Gordimer's early interest in racial and economic inequality in South Africa was shaped in part by her parents. Her father's experience as a refugee in tsarist Russia helped form Gordimer's political identity, but he was neither an activist nor particularly sympathetic toward the experiences of black people under apartheid.〔"(A Writer's Life: Nadine Gordimer )", ''Telegraph'', 3 April 2006.〕 Conversely, Gordimer saw activism by her mother, whose concern about the poverty and discrimination faced by black people in South Africa ostensibly led her to found a crèche for black children.〔 Gordimer also witnessed government repression first-hand as a teenager; the police raided her family home, confiscating letters and diaries from a servant's room.〔 Gordimer was educated at a Catholic convent school, but was largely home-bound as a child because her mother, for "strange reasons of her own," did not put her into school (apparently, she feared that Gordimer had a weak heart).〔 Home-bound and often isolated, she began writing at an early age, and published her first stories in 1937 at the age of 15.〔(Nadine Gordimer ), ''Guardian Unlimited'' (last visited 25 January 2007).〕 Her first published work was a short story for children, "The Quest for Seen Gold," which appeared in the ''Children's Sunday Express'' in 1937; "Come Again Tomorrow," another children's story, appeared in ''Forum'' around the same time. At the age of 16, she had her first adult fiction published.〔(Nadine Gordimer: ''A Sport of Nature'' ), The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.〕 Gordimer studied for a year at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she mixed for the first time with fellow professionals across the colour bar. She also became involved in the Sophiatown renaissance.〔 She did not complete her degree, but moved to Johannesburg in 1948, where she lived thereafter. While taking classes in Johannesburg, she continued to write, publishing mostly in local South African magazines. She collected many of these early stories in ''Face to Face'', published in 1949. In 1951, the ''New Yorker'' accepted Gordimer's story "A Watcher of the Dead",〔''New Yorker'', 9 June 1951.〕 beginning a long relationship, and bringing Gordimer's work to a much larger public. Gordimer, who said she believed the short story was the literary form for our age,〔 continued to publish short stories in the ''New Yorker'' and other prominent literary journals. Her first publisher, Lulu Friedman, was the wife of the Parliamentarian Bernard Friedman and it was at their house, "Tall Trees" in First Avenue, Lower Houghton, Johannesburg, that Gordimer met other anti-apartheid writers. Gordimer's first novel, ''The Lying Days'', was published in 1953. Gordimer had a daughter, Oriane (born 1950), by her first marriage in 1949 to Gerald Gavron, a local dentist, from whom she was divorced within three years.〔 In 1954, she married Reinhold Cassirer, a highly respected art dealer who established the South African Sotheby's and later ran his own gallery; their "wonderful marriage"〔 lasted until his death from emphysema in 2001. Their son, Hugo, was born in 1955, and is a filmmaker in New York, with whom Gordimer collaborated on at least two documentaries. Hugo Cassirer later married Sarah Buttrick, and had three children. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nadine Gordimer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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