Nadine Gordimer was born in Springs, Transvaal, South
Africa. She published her first work at age fifteen and has since produced
ten novels and more than 200 short stories. Her writings movingly lashed
out against the cruelties of apartheid and decried racial segregation for
what it was - degrading to her native country and to other African states.
Through the experiences of her characters, Gordimer explored clearly and
without sentimentality how officially-imposed prejudice and repression
devastated lives and offended the basic principles of social justice. she
was the first woman in a generation to win a Nobel Prize for Literature
(1991), and has had several of her books banned by the former south African
government. While in mid-career, Gordimer also taught and lectured at
colleges in the U.S. and supported political movements to rescind her
nation's racist policies. Among her best known and most poignant works were
A Guest of Honour (1970), The Conservationist (1974), Burger's Daughter
(1979) and A Sport of Nature (1987).