Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century - Softcover

Gordimer, Nadine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747548234 ISBN 13: 9780747548232

Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

Few writers have so consistently taken stock of the society in which they have lived in a letter to fellow nobel laureate kenzaburo oe, nadine gordimer describes this impressive volume as a modest book of some of the non-fiction pieces ive written, a reflection of how ive looked at this century ive lived in it is, in fact, an extraordinary collection of essays, articles, appreciations of fellow writers and addresses delivered over four decades, including her nobel prize lecture of 1991 we may examine here nadine gordimers evidence of the inequities of apartheid as she saw them in 1959, her shocking account of the bans on literature still in effect in the mid-1970s, through to south africas emergence in 1994 as a country free at last, a view from the queue on that first day blacks and whites voted together plus updates on subsequent events gordimers canvas is global and her themes wide-ranging she examines the impact of technology on our expanding world-view, the convergence of the moral and the political in fiction and she reassesses the role of the writer in the world today

About this title

Review

"Nothing I write in such factual pieces will be as true as my fiction," Nadine Gordimer asserts in the opening essay of Living in Hope and History. It's hard to think of any line that would inspire less confidence in a book of nonfiction. But the author, after all, is a Nobel laureate, an antiapartheid activist, an African National Congress member, and a public figure of unimpeachable moral seriousness--and her warning is no piece of postmodern playfulness. Instead she means to draw an important distinction between genres. Nonfiction, in Gordimer's view, issues from her own political agenda, while her transcendent aim in fiction is to represent the way things are. The two impulses may overlap, of course, but they are seldom congruent. She's quick to acknowledge that writers can't truly escape politics, nor would it be desirable if they could. Still, writes Gordimer, "the transformation of the imagination must never 'belong' to any establishment, however just, fought-for, and longed-for."

What this collection offers, then, is not art itself but the record of one woman's fierce dedication to both her art and her politics--and her attempts to negotiate the relationship between them. Living in Hope and History includes graduation addresses, lectures, the author's Nobel acceptance speech, impressively learned essays on Joseph Roth and Günter Grass, and even her correspondence with Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe. Dating from the dark old days of apartheid through the present, the assemblage also offers a moving document of the South African struggle and its eventual fruits. Some of the most exhilarating pieces chronicle the new, postapartheid nation--"The First Time" finds Gordimer standing in voting queues for her country's first democratic elections, and "Act Two: One Year Later" is a celebration of Johannesburg's newfound vibrancy. Living in Hope and History is first and foremost a record of Gordimer's life as a public figure. In these essays, however, the political and the imaginative seem to sound a common, joyful note: this is the way things are, this is the way things should be. --Mary Park

About the Author

Nadine Gordimer's many novels include THE LYING DAYS (her first novel), THE CONSERVATIONIST, joint winner of the Booker Prize, BURGER'S DAUGTER, JULY'S PEOPLE, MY SON'S STORY, NONE TO ACCOMPANY ME, and most recently, THE HOUSE GUN. Her collections of short stories include SOMETHING OUT THERE and JUMP. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She lives in South Africa.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0747548234
• ISBN 13: 9780747548232
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256