4. Nadine Gordimer
PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID LEVENSON, GETTY IMAGES
South African writer Nadine Gordimer won the 1991 Nobel Prize in literature. The Nobel committee said that Gordimer “through her magnificent epic writing, in the words of Alfred Nobel, ‘has been of very great benefit to humanity.'” A daughter of White, middle-class Jewish immigrants, Gordimer developed an early interest in racial and economic inequality in South Africa and wrote about this injustice in her books. In an interview with the Paris Review in 1980, however, she took pains to minimize the role of politics in her work and underscore that the larger goal of a writer is “to try to make sense of life. I think that’s what writing is.” Her works include “The Soft Voice of the Serpent,” a collection of short stories; “The Lying Days”; “July’s People”; and her most recent, “No Time Like the Present.” Gordimer was active in the anti-Apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress after it was banned.
