'It's a brand on the imagination'

 

“The creative act is not pure. History evidences it. Sociology extracts it. The writer loses Eden, writes to be read and comes to realize that he is answerable.” – Nadine Gordimer

 

Born in South Africa on this date in 1923, Gordimer became the first writer from her country to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.  Gordimer, who died in 2014, was a creative, political and humanitarian force in South Africa for nearly 60 years.

 

Gordimer’s first novel The Lying Days was published in 1953 and by the early 1960s she had gained both international acclaim and the ire of the government.  Active in Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress during the years when that organization was banned, many of her writings were inspiring for Mandela’s cause, but like Mandela’s political efforts banned in her own country.  All told she authored dozens of essays, 22 short story collections and 15 worldwide bestselling novels.  And she helped Mandela edit his famous trial speech “I Am Prepared To Die.”  

  

Led by multiple-award winning novels like The Conservationist and Burger's Daughter, Gordimer's works deal with the themes of love and politics.   Always questioning power relations and truth, her stories tell of ordinary people dealing with moral ambiguities and choices.   She won the Nobel in 1991 and said the censorship she endured for her writing was life-scarring.  

 

“Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it,” she said.  “It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.”